


And Death Lives On

by eosaurora13



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, And Silver is a little shit, Canonical Character Death, Flint's treasure is still a thing, Ghost!Flint, M/M, Slow Burn, There will be a happy ending, Will delve into Silver's past at some point
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-11
Updated: 2017-01-04
Packaged: 2018-06-01 13:58:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 45,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6522697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eosaurora13/pseuds/eosaurora13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Silver moves to Nassau after events in England drive him out. Almost broke, he can only afford a fixer-upper of a house, which turns out to be haunted with the spirit of a pirate captain from the 1700s.  The treasure Captain Flint buried prior to his death sets in movement events that change the course of John's life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic in the Black Sails fandom. We'll see how it goes. That being said, this idea just would not leave me alone so here it is.

Compared to the crowds and bustle of London, its grey brick and permanent covering of rain-laden clouds, the slower pace amid the sprawling expanse of colorful buildings butting up again the crystal clear blue waters of the Caribbean provided a stark, but not wholly unwelcome, contrast. John Silver stepped off the airplane and took a deep breath of clean, tropical air, almost tasting the salt on it. He pushed his sunglasses up the bridge of his nose, still squinting under the radiance of the Caribbean sun, and walked down the stairs exiting the plane.

Life had shit on him one too many times, everything going very, very wrong and quickly. Fleeing to the other side of the world was about the only option left to him. He hated it but he was determined to make the best of a bad situation.

Despite uprooting his life back in England, he only had two bags with him. The rest of his belongings, what few he had – what few he hadn’t lost – he had shipped ahead of him. His careful control over his anger threatened to slip so he brushed the thought aside. He hadn’t yet found a place to live but Max assured him he could crash at her place until he did. Max – who was his best, and currently his only, friend.

As if the mere thought summoned her, he spotted her rickety little car parked at the far end of the tarmac. “And here I’d thought you’d forgotten about me,” he teased when he was close enough for her to hear him.

She punched him lightly on the arm, her eyes hidden behind sunglasses. “I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving you lost and alone in a strange place,” she teased back in her thick French accent, her face breaking into a radiant smile. “I’m glad you finally saw the light, _mon cher._ ”

“This has nothing to do with all your attempts to get me to move out here,” he pointed out. “I’m just giving it a go. We’ll see how long it lasts.”

She snorted as she slid into the driver’s seat. “That’s what everyone always says. This place – it worms its way into your heart.” She pointed a finger at him. “You’ll stay. Just you wait.”

John hummed noncommittally. He hadn’t yet told Max of his reasons for such a change of pace – wasn’t sure he had the guts to do so.

Max shifted the car into drive, kicking up dirt off the edge of the landing strip. The ride into Nassau was quiet. Max left John to his own thoughts. She was curious, he knew, about his behavior the past week – calling her out of the blue, flying out to the Bahamas when he hated flying, hated water, hated the very sun that beat down on them – but she refused to press. He loved that about her. When he wanted to open up – if he ever did – he would. 

“I have you an appointment with the realtor in the morning,” she informed him, cutting into his thoughts. “Hopefully, we’ll find you a place to live within the week.”

John offered her an easy smile and agreed to the meeting just a bit too quickly.

She said nothing of it and kept her eyes glued to the road.

Max’s loft sat nestled above one of the local inns, the one Max worked at, practically running the business as its owner drank himself into the ground. She complained about the hours but the pay was decent.

The wood stairs creaked under John’s weight as he climbed them, trailing behind Max like a lost puppy. She pointed him in the direction of her futon after she shut and locked the door.

He dropped his bags on the floor and collapsed into the cushions. “God, I forgot how much flying sucks.” He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, only stopping when he saw flashes of colors. The exhaustion of the past few days caught up with him in an instant and he struggled to hold back tears. Fuck this.

“You won’t be flying again soon,” Max assured him, handing him a pillow and blanket. “Get some sleep.”

He didn’t need to be told twice, especially when he checked his phone and realized it was after midnight in London.

The meeting with the realtor the next morning went about as well as he expected. With so little money to his name, the odds of him actually finding, let alone being able to afford, somewhere – anywhere – to live were depressingly slim. He turned on the charm to no effect. Max even pulled out her landlady voice, the one she used on her customers, the one that brooked no argument. 

He simply did not have enough to purchase any of the properties the realtor had listed.

They left the meeting quietly, both feeling the failure of the moment. Max would let John stay as long as he needed – he trusted her to do that – but he hated to impose any longer than necessary. He’d depended on someone’s charity once before and it ended with him almost crying on Max’s futon. That was not an experience he wanted to repeat. Ever.

Max handed him a mug of tea after they’d returned to her loft. “We’ll make it work,” she assured him, her voice strong with quiet conviction.

John’s cell phone chose that moment to ring, cutting off whatever else she might have said. 

John checked the caller ID, his brow furrowing at the name. “It’s the realtor,” he muttered to Max as he answered the call.

“Mr. Silver, would you be willing to come back in this afternoon?” the realtor asked, her voice strangely… hesitant. “We’ve had – uh, a potential property open up that you might be interested in.”

“Just give me a time. I’ll be there.”

Maybe the universe was choosing to smile on him just this once. Maybe.

Or maybe he should just count himself lucky he hasn’t had to kill anyone yet.

The house the realtor was offering wasn’t much to look at. It was located well in the interior of the island, far away from the city, and to call it a fixer-upper was being kind. At one time, though, it must have been gorgeous. “I didn’t think to show it to you,” the realtor explained, “because of how rundown it’s gotten.” Something in her voice hinted that wasn’t quite the reason but John didn’t pursue it. If he needed to know what is was, he would ask.

“It looks old,” Max commented, tracing along one of the photos laid out on the desk in front of her.

The realtor hummed, handing a photo to John. “Dates back to the colonial period.” She shook her head. “That house has a lot of history but we haven’t been able to keep it leased. People just choose not to stay long.”

John bit back the retort playing on his tongue. She made it sound like the place was haunted. John believed in a lot but that strayed to the boundary of delusional. 

“I’ll take it.”

Max and the realtor recovered from their shock and spoke over each other in protest. Max argued that he hadn’t even seen the house, the realtor that he should take twenty-four hours to think it over. She said he’d need to have the house inspected and meet with the current owner, who was halfway around the world on a mission trip in the Congo.

Except John was tired of having life make his decisions for him. He could ignore this opportunity and stay with Max until a better one came along or he could jump on this. It wasn’t a contest.

“I’m taking the damn house. Today if at all possible.” When the realtor left to gather up the paperwork, he leaned over to Max. “I know what I’m doing.” He shrugged. “Besides, you know me. I see an opportunity, I have to take it.”

Max’s smiled, though fond, was tinged with worry. “I do know once your mind is set, it’s impossible to change it. It would be foolish to try.”

“Smart girl.”

“Just don’t realize in a week’s time you’ve made a mistake.”

In that moment, it didn’t matter if it was a mistake. He could ride it to wherever it led him.

Three hours later saw John Silver a few thousand dollars poorer and the proud owner of a colonial mansion. As he thumbed over the deed to the house, he thought about Max’s words, how this place wormed its way into you, and he smiled.

***

Max had to work the next day but she let John borrow her car so he could drive out to what would eventually be his new home. After getting lost on unnamed roads, both paved and not, more times than he cared to count or admit to, he finally pulled up to the drive.

Though the pavement weaved around overgrown shrubbery and up a slight incline, he parked the car and walked its length to the front door. The stucco crumbled off the frame in a handful of patches, the wood underneath showing signs of bleaching but not rot. He traced along the jagged edge, his finger coming away white. From his cursory inspection, the roof and ceiling looked to be intact and he found no evidence of leaks or mold. 

Just years and years of wear and neglect.

The house was far too much like him in that regard.

Every window was shuttered and as he walked through every room on the first floor of the house, composing a mental list of the supplies he’d need to beg, borrow, or steal to make the house livable again, he opened them all to let light in. One of the shutters fell off its hinges at the lightest touch. He added new hinges to a healthy supply of two by fours, stucco, paint, and whatever the hell people used to repair hardwood. Just to start. 

He heaved a sigh of relief that, when he checked, the pipes all seemed to be in working order. Basic home repairs he could do. Plumbing was beyond him. One of the previous owners, in their brief time in the house, had thought to modernize it with light fixtures and power outlets. Another task he wouldn’t have to YouTube how to do.

He climbed the rickety stairs to the second floor, exploring the bedrooms, bathrooms, and spare rooms that could have been storage or studies. Or libraries, he thought wistfully, the image of bookshelves laden with vintage books – some first edition – appearing before him, unbidden and unwanted. That past was gone. Remembering it only made the pain worse. He took a deep, steadying breath and continued his explorations.

One room at the back of the house was different from the rest. Every other room stood bright and airy after his walkthrough despite the decay, their windows open and inviting. This room was sealed off, its windows boarded shut. He would need a hammer to pry the nails out of the walls. Today, he’d have to leave them be. 

That alone would have seemed strange but the contents of the room were stranger still. Dusty cobwebs covered the stacks of books and papers, neither of which should have been in a previously owned house. No one would have left that behind.

John kept his hand on the doorknob, some part of his mind screaming at him to run despite not seeing anything in the room worth running from. He spotted an old picture of the house on yellowed paper, easily from the 1700s, on the closest stack and left the safety of the doorway to collect it. Nothing more than a quick sketch, it still showed how beautiful the house could be if treated well. Not wanting to spend a moment longer in that room than necessary, and being unable to sufficiently explain why, he pocketed the paper and pulled the door shut with a quiet click.

He walked back to his car after ensuring the house was locked up. Despite the warmth of the sun, the back of his neck felt cold, the hairs standing on end. He glanced over his shoulder at the house, half expecting someone to be standing in a window watching him leave. He scanned each one - no one was there. Except a lingering darkness in the corner of his eye.

_You’re imagining things, Silver,_ he scolded himself. He had more than enough ghosts leering over his shoulder. One more was not welcome.

Over the next days, he forgot about the picture and about the strange feeling, pouring all of his energy into collecting material and remodeling. He took odd jobs at Max’s inn and other local establishments in exchange for money and supplies. Mostly, he bounced between helping Max balance her books and tending bar across the street at Eleanor Guthrie’s tavern. Guthrie and Max had a history but neither felt the need to share it with him, which suited him fine.

Max joined him at the house on her days off, offering suggestions and helping with the heavier lifting. Sometimes, he convinced her to get her hands dirty as he repaired walls and laid new floor. They rarely spoke while they worked but then, they didn’t need to.

One afternoon when they stopped for lunch, and for the rain shower that appeared out of nowhere, Max looked over at him. “The air must be doing you good, _mon cher._ You’re looking better.”

John chuckled. “That’s just all the work you’ve made me do.”

“This was your idea,” she retorted. “Protest all you want, the island’s good for you.” She looked around at the kitchen they’d only begun remodeling. “When do you think you’ll move in?”

“Well, I’m convinced the roof won’t collapse on my head so…” He stared out the window at the rain softly pattering against the grass. “Sometime in the next few days.”

Max scoffed. “You don’t even have a bed!” 

He shrugged. “I’ve got an air mattress.” He had slept in far worse places. That knowledge hung in the air between them, unspoken. 

Max grew pensive. John feared that look. She came up with crazy ideas when it appeared. “You’re going to stay tonight,” she announced. “And then we’ll discuss your harebrained plans to stay here longer.”

There was no arguing with her in when she hit one of her moods. She matched his stubbornness with her own. When he said nothing, her mouth curled in a smile. 

He shoved the rest of his sandwich in his mouth. “Come on. We’ve still got plenty of light left.”

She threw her head back and laughed.

They finished repairing the wall between the kitchen and the dining room and putting one coat of paint on it before Max had to leave for work. John had commented once on the hours she kept but the argument that sparked did not need repeating. She took the car, leaving him only with a spare change of clothes, his toiletries, and the air mattress he’d mentioned. 

Pumping up the air mattress by hand wore out what few muscles he hadn’t overworked with remodeling. He lowered himself onto the floor with a groan and almost had to laugh at what he spotted on the floor beside him.

Max had left one of his books, which he was delighted to find was his collection of Edgar Allen Poe stories, with the note, “Something to keep you company tonight.” He flipped to “The Fall of the House of Usher” and started reading.

He couldn’t say what woke him some hours later. The house was quiet.

Too quiet.

He rose from the air mattress and walked to the window. No stars shone in the sky. No crickets chirped in the yard. The house itself seemed to hold its breath.

A tendril of cold air brushed the back of his neck.

He spun and saw…well, he wasn’t sure what he saw.

In the doorway, stood something. A figure almost human in shape except it had no substance and sucked in what little light shone in from the window. Every instinct screamed at John to run but his legs wouldn’t move.

_Who are you?_

John Silver was called many things, not the least common of which was coward. At the moment, he didn’t care. He bolted for the door.

Which stubbornly refused to unlock no matter how he shook it. 

The air behind him chilled.

He didn’t have to look behind him to know that entity, or spirit, was there. 

_Who are you?_ It didn’t speak or even form words but the air itself seemed to hum with what it wished to say.

He gulped. “My name is John Silver.” 

_Why are you here?_ The air crackled with anger. _What do you want?_

John turned from the door and, never looking away, took a step forward and noted the motion gave the entity pause. There was some satisfaction to be taken if his life were not still in danger. “Well, I would very much like to live here.” The statement could be taken more than one way – either would work. But he added, “If that would be amenable to you.”

A thought struck him. The page he had taken the first day – if somehow this spirit or being was connected to it – its absence might have woken it. In which case, he was incredibly stupid. Or it was late at night and he was slowly losing his mind. 

The spirit paced, clearly annoyed. It paused and where its eyes should have been bore into John. _You can stay. For now._ And it vanished.

John let out a breath he hadn’t been aware he was holding and sank on shaky legs to the floor. His insides slowly untwisted themselves. He leaned back against the door and heard the sound of crickets chirping. 

Lightning lit up the house and thunder rumbled in the distance soon after.


	2. Chapter 2

“You look like you need a drink.”

John glanced up at Eleanor as she walked over. He took the drink she offered and drained it in a single gulp. “Make it two.”

She arched an eyebrow but nodded slowly, disappearing behind the bar to pour him another shot.

Try as he might, he couldn’t get his encounter at the house out of his head. Any normal person would have marched to the realtor’s office at first light and demanded he get his money back. John had instead crawled into the tavern, the circles under his eyes warning away anyone who thought to bother him. At least, Max wasn’t there to pester him and Eleanor hardly ever asked questions.

He didn’t want to explain why he was drinking so early in the morning. And he didn’t want to face Max’s anger at him drinking at all. She would flay him alive and the thing in his house had done that well enough on its own. Or rather, the adrenaline ripping through his veins had.

Eleanor slid him another shot, which he downed as quickly as the first. The whiskey burned and he clung to the sensation. It grounded him. “You better be up to working tonight,” she warned him. “I’m expecting a rough crowd.”

John chuckled. “You expect a rough crowd every night. I thought that’s why Mr. Scott’s here.” He motioned at himself. “I’m curious just what do you expect _me_ to do about any rough customers. My mantra is usually to run _away_ from a fight, not jump in the middle of one.” He flashed her a smile, all teeth and no truth.

Eleanor snorted. “And yet you bought the old Barlow manor.”

The way she said its name… John leaned closer. “What do you know about it?” 

“Just rumors and stories,” she hedged. 

He dropped the smile. “Tell me.”

All Eleanor knew was that the house originally belonged to a Miranda Barlow, who had befriended some of the pirates that called Nassau home during their golden age around the turn of the 18th century. One of them, a Captain Flint, had committed suicide there after her brutal execution by the British during their takeover of Nassau. A bullet to the brain, according to the stories.

“You’re not trying to tell me the house is haunted by Flint’s ghost, are you?” He kept his voice light but all he could see was the figure glaring at him. All he could feel was the cold that seemed to surround it. The name fit.

He suppressed a shiver. It had to be his luck he’d buy a house that was not only haunted, but was haunted by a fucking pirate.

She shrugged. “The last person to own the house said she saw a strange figure wandering the rooms and it attacked her, almost killed her, when she stepped into one of the upstairs rooms.” She poured herself a shot. “That was almost fifty years ago. Word got around and now no one will even go near the place.” She gazed at him intently over the glass. “Except you.”

And Max. 

He had put her in danger without even realizing it.

John smiled despite the taste of bile rising in the back of his throat. “Should I take that as a challenge?”

Eleanor pushed away from the bar. “You can take it however you damn well want. As long as you don’t drop shifts and don’t cost me customers, I don’t really give a fuck where you live.”

Really, he couldn’t have expected anything more out of a conversation with Eleanor. The woman had a temper that rivaled some hardened criminals and a shrewd mind to go with it. She only gave information away for free if she didn’t think she could get a profit from it. And he doubted what she gave him came without a price tag. He just hadn’t seen the bill yet.

He watched her walk away, deep in conversation with Mr. Scott, before glancing outside. The sun had long since risen and thin beams of light shone in through the colored glass panes. He almost groaned at the hours he’d wasted turning the night’s events over and over in his mind. He laid a wad of cash on the bar to cover his tab and walked across the street to Max’s.

Thankfully, she was still working downstairs so he had a few hours to himself without having to explain how or why he was back so early.

The sketch he’d taken was still in his jacket pocket that he’d slung over the back of the futon. He unfolded it and stared down at the picture. The ink had faded in places, the yellow of the page showing through the black, but the house in the image was something to aspire to in his remodeling. He turned the page over. The back was blank. 

He laid it beside him, where it sat plain and unassuming. What was it about this page that brought the spirit back into the world? 

Remembering the name Eleanor had mentioned, he got up, digging through piles of how-to books and paperwork. Max’s laptop was there somewhere. He quickly turned it on once he found it, returning to the futon, and typed “Captain Flint” into the search bar. If the page was as old as it looked and showed the house at its height, indicating it was from Barlow’s time, it had to be from Flint’s as well. Several articles popped up from history sites and each looked to be decent length.

His stomach growled angrily. He forced himself into the kitchen to fix a real breakfast before delving into that mass of text. The whiskey he’d chugged at Eleanor’s sloshed on his stomach. He knew better than to drink on an empty stomach but the events of the night certainly warranted a bit of stupidity. He nibbled on a piece of toast until he no longer thought seriously about throwing up. A full plate in hand, he meandered back to the computer and sat down to read.

He finally switched from Captain Flint’s history after exhausting the internet’s supply of tall tales and less-than-accurate facts to that of Miranda Barlow, what little he could find on her. Whereas Flint had made his name as one of the most notorious pirates in the Caribbean, she barely left a footnote. In fact, it was as if she hadn’t existed at all. Frustrated, he moved to a more general history of the island and was still reading when Max finished her shift around lunchtime.

She gaped at him as she walked in. “What are you doing back? I expected you to be hard at your renovations.”

John glanced up from the screen and shrugged. “I missed your glowing presence.”

She threw her keys on the table. “I don’t appreciate it when you lie to me. Lie to everyone else if you want, but not me. Idelle told me she saw you at Eleanor’s.”

John leaned back, keeping his posture carefully relaxed. Though he had wanted to avoid this conversation, he also wanted to avoid confrontation and thought it best not to rile Max up. “I do work there.”

“Not at eight in the morning.” She crossed her arms. “I wouldn’t expect you to tell me if you’d gone back to drinking – “

“I haven’t gone back to drinking, Max,” John interrupted, his voice quiet. That had been his mistake back in London, one that cost him dearly, and one he had no intention of repeating. “And if this has something to do with my association with Miss Guthrie, let me know now since I do plan to keep my job for the foreseeable future.”

She huffed but the pain that passed across her face told him he hit closer to the mark than either was comfortable with. She cleared her throat. “So what were you doing then? What is going on?”

John discreetly closed the internet window and shut the laptop. “Aside from asking for a ride since you were still at work and needing a change in scenery?” He purposefully met her gaze. “It’s hard being alone in such a huge house. I just needed to be somewhere else.”

It wasn’t a total lie, not after what had brought him out here in the first place. It just wasn’t the truth either.

She sat beside him on the futon. “I know there are things you aren’t telling me. You use your words to shield you from people but I see through that, mon cher.” She tucked a stray strand of hair behind his ear and kissed his cheek. “When you’re ready to talk, you know where to find me.”

The futon creaked at the shifting of weight as she rose. John remained frozen for a moment, pondering Max’s words. He had no desire to stay here with Max’s all too genuine offer to spill his guts, but he had no desire to go back to the house either, not now that he knew what resided in its walls.

Still… 

He called out, “Can I steal your car?”

Max’s voice rang out from the bathroom, over the patter of water in the shower. “Keys are on the table!”

He pocketed the keys and bounded out of the apartment, a spring in his step that did not match with his objective in the slightest. Sometimes, he reasoned, to find something out, you had to take very serious risks. Returning to his house fell into that category. Telling the spirit about the page, and that he’d taken it, was at the top of said category. 

The house was just as he’d left it – not that he expected anything different. He turned the key in the lock and opened the door. From the doorway, nothing appeared out of place but he felt eyes on him, felt cold air twist and twirl around him. He walked into the kitchen, to his air mattress and few other belongings he had left behind in his earlier haste to leave. His collection of Poe stories, which had been by his bed, he found on the counter open to “The Raven.”

“Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,” he recited, his eyes falling closed “Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal dared to dream before.” He chuckled. Well, that was a little too appropriate. “You have an interesting choice in poetry,” he spoke to the empty room.

_What do you want?_

The voice startled him, every inch of his skin crawling.

He glanced over his shoulder to find the spirit darkening the room behind him. There was an unnatural feeling to how light simply disappeared around it. “Well, I had a question for you,” he replied with a hint of a smile.

The temperature dropped several degrees. _Is that so?_ If the spirit could have smiled, John swore it would have – the kind of smile that doesn’t reach the eyes. A predator’s smile.

Not an image he wanted to have.

He pulled the page out of his pocket and held it out. “I found this upstairs and wanted to know if it was important?”

The force that hurled him against the wall was like nothing he’d ever experienced. He had been punched many times in his life, beaten to within an inch of that life – nothing compared to what lifted him off the ground and pressed him into the sheetrock as if it were trying to push him through it.

_That wasn’t yours!_

“I own the house,” John argued, though he struggled to draw breath. “And everything in it.” Pain erupted along his throat, an invisible knife dragging against his skin. Even in life-threatening situations, he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. “In my defense, I brought it back,” John hedged, fully aware his feet were not touching anything solid and a thin trickle of blood dripped down his neck.

_A smart decision_ , was all the spirit said before dropping him. 

He crumpled to the floor and glared at the figure standing above him. “What’s so important about that damn page?” He held his breath, every nerve shaking, every muscle pulled taut, as he waited for the response.

Nothing.

He brushed himself off and wiped the blood off his neck. A couple of drops stained his collar and he hoped Max wouldn’t notice them. There was no rational way to explain a ghost almost slitting his throat and he didn’t want to think about a world where such a reason might exist. “If we’re going to live together, we need to communicate in such a way that does not involve bodily harm.”

The figure huffed, a shift in the air more than a sound. _Why would I want to communicate with you? A thief who has no regard for the property of others?_

“Do you have any room to judge me?” John countered, his disgust at his own fear driving him to press this thing’s buttons further. “ _Captain_?”

The figure stilled. John felt the danger in the air, the anger rolling off it in waves.

“That was your name, wasn’t it? James Flint, captain of the _Walrus_?” He drawled the words out, laced them with honey. He stepped closer, lowering his voice. “Or does the name Miranda Barlow sound more familiar?”

Flint turned toward him and, though John could not make out a face in the shadows that were Flint’s ghost, he recognized the fury there. And the despair.

_Get out._ The words were softer than the others Flint had spoken, the barest movement of air.

John had pressed his luck enough for one afternoon and hastily fled the house, not once glancing back as he got in the car and drove away. 

He had barely enough time to change clothes and alcohol the cut on his neck before his shift started at the tavern. Eleanor hadn’t lied. The crowd that filtered in might have walked out of a mafia piece. Some could have even called pirate ships home. He didn’t relish the notion of stopping fights between any of them but after surviving a ghost, he almost felt invincible.

His mouth got him into more trouble than it should have, considering what a few ill-timed words caused with Flint. When Eleanor nodded toward a group that glared at anyone who came too close, John stepped in with a quick-witted insult about them belonging in a pirate flick and wound up on the floor, nursing a black eye and a split lip. He kicked the offending man’s legs out from under him in retaliation, noting with some satisfaction the thud with which he landed.

The remainder of the group moved to give him a beating he wouldn’t soon forget but the man on the floor with him stopped them with a wave of his hand. He gazed at John. “You’re new, aren’t you?”

John glanced at the men above him. “Is it that obvious?”

“No one takes on my crew alone. Fucking stupid move.” The man stood, dusting off his jacket.

John had the distinct impression he was about to lay down the law, which meant John would wind up hospitalized. 

Figured.

Instead, he offered John his hand. 

John was not about to refuse.

“Name’s Charles Vane, captain of the _Ranger_.”

“John Silver.” John didn’t bother asking what the _Ranger_ was and why he should find that impressive. Or intimidating.

Vane looked him over. “Eleanor could’ve done worse.” He clapped John on the shoulder. “See you around.” He motioned to his crew.

John caught Eleanor’s glare following Vane and his men – and at least one woman – as they left the tavern. He sank into a chair and gratefully accepted the ice pack Mr. Scott handed to him. The ice numbed the pain radiating from around his eye.

“Keep the ice on for five minutes, off for ten,” Mr. Scott instructed him. “Then go home for the night.” John opened his mouth to protest but Mr. Scott cut him off. “The _Ranger_ crew was the worst we expected tonight. I can handle the rest.”

“Will someone tell me who they are and why Miss Guthrie expected them to cause trouble?”

Mr. Scott glanced at Eleanor, who was still glaring at the space Vane and his crew had occupied as if their very presence insulted her. “On that, I cannot say. You would have to ask Eleanor.”

John had no intention to do anything of the sort. It was a conversation to hold onto for a calmer, quieter moment. He lingered until the ice had melted and all he had was a bag of water. The murder in Eleanor’s eyes didn’t fade so he quietly exited out the side door. 

Standing on the street and watching the cars flash by, John pondered what to do with the remainder of his evening. He could go back to Max’s – she had the night off – and let her mother him and lecture him about pissing off paying customers. Or he could go home.

Having a conversation about getting beat up in a bar with a ghost from the 18th century was a rather interesting proposition.

He hailed a cab and managed to catch some sleep on the drive. His body was soundly protesting the trauma he had put it through but he let the cabbie drop him off at the top of his drive and walked in.

He bagged a handful of ice and reapplied it to his face. Despite his best efforts, he’d have a couple of shiners come morning.

The air turned cold when Flint walked into the room though, and John wondered how and why he knew this, the temperature was less frigid than their previous encounters. _Do you enjoy getting into fights? Or are you too stupid to avoid them?_

John chuckled and immediately aborted the motion, pain flaring from his lip. “Are you that desperate?”

_Beg pardon?_

John sat the ice in the sink and leaned against the counter. “Given our…conversation this afternoon, I would have thought you and I would need to occupy very different areas of the house in order to not – “ he stopped, almost tripping over the words “kill each other”. “To not repeat said conversation,” he managed instead. He motioned around the kitchen. “Instead, you’re here and you’re being relatively civil. Which could mean one of two things – you’re bored and delight in tormenting me. _Or_ you need something.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “So which is it?”

Flint hesitated and John suppressed a smile.

_Let me tell you a story…_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I've introduced a couple of other characters in this one. They'll start coming in more as we go. Hope y'all enjoy!


	3. Chapter 3

John expected Max to read him the riot act when she saw him the next day. His injuries were prominent and he couldn’t do much to hide them. He had put off the conversation as long as possible but, like ripping off a Band-Aid, some things were best to just get over with. Besides, Max’s anger was not nearly as volatile as Flint’s, or even Eleanor’s he guessed. He might survive the encounter.

Contrary to his predictions, when Max arrived to help with renovations and saw his injuries, she grew quiet, tracing along his split lip and black eye with her thumb. “Who did this?” she asked finally.

“Charles Vane I believe his name was,” John replied, seeing no reason to keep it from her.

She recoiled, clenching her fists at her side. “Eleanor let him into her tavern?”

“Yes?” He drew the word out as he processed her reaction, so drastically different from anything he expected. “I’m sorry, is there something I missed?”

Whatever darkness had come over Max, it disappeared just as quickly. She smiled at him. “You have your secrets. I have mine.”

John felt as if his world had shifted uncomfortably sideways, inexplicable as the feeling was. His secrets hadn’t followed him from England to his knowledge and, though they tormented him, their damage was done. Whatever secrets Max held with Eleanor and Vane, John felt they hadn’t yet seen the full extent of the harm they could inflict. That Max would purposefully not tell him stung. But he returned her smile and said, “Touché.” And that was the end of that.

Deep in those thoughts as he was, he noted that Flint made himself scarce while Max was at the house. Even after they unloaded all the supplies Max had brought – new hardwood, a refrigerator, and a healthy supply of food – and they had started working in the upstairs rooms, Flint never once appeared and Max never looked at or questioned the locked room.

A question for another time but he could only imagine what manner of hell the two of them might get up to together.

Max had work that afternoon so she stayed only a couple of hours. In that time, they tore up the old hardwood and laid new down in the room John had chosen for the master bedroom, the new hardwood courtesy of Eleanor for the night before according to an earlier text. If Max knew, or had anything to say about it, she kept it to herself. 

“Will you be staying here again tonight?” Max called out as she washed her hands in the bathroom tucked behind the bedroom they were working in.

John examined the room, pleased with the progress but not wanting to waste the day he had left. “There’s still plenty of light. I figured I’d get a coat of paint on these walls. Then yeah, I’ll crash here.”

Max smiled, not at all surprised. “I brought your clothes and books.” She shrugged when John gaped at her. “Just it case.”

He kissed her forehead after they hauled it all inside. “Thank you, Max.” And despite his reservations at her history with Vane, he truly meant it. She knew him too well, and sometimes that wasn’t a bad thing.

“Anytime, _mon cher._ ”

He watched her drive away, her car churning up dust as she turned onto the main road. 

His phone buzzed. Another text from Eleanor that said he had the next two nights off but she expected him back after that, come hell or high water. Two days to worry about Max and her secrets. Two days to figure out what the hell Flint wanted and how to survive it.

Or, better yet, how to turn it to his favor.

As if summoned, Flint appeared in the doorway. 

John didn’t turn around. Even though Max’s car was no longer visible, he pretended the view out the window was more interesting than the ghost behind him.

_Come with me._

John glanced over his shoulder but Flint was already walking away. He dashed after him, his skin thrumming and his blood rushing in his ears. He noted, with some trepidation, that Flint had disappeared into _that_ room, walking through the door as if it weren’t there. His hand hovered over the doorknob, their conversation the night before recalling itself in his mind.

Flint had told him a hell of a tale and John struggled to wrap his mind around it. A treasure beyond measure, stolen from a wrecked Spanish fleet, hidden on an unnamed island that only Flint knew the location of? Preposterous didn’t even begin to cover it.

And, even now, in the middle of the day when the dreams and desires of the night faded away, he had to admit he was very, very intrigued.

Of course, at the time, with the day he’d had, he had wanted nothing more than to sleep for hours on end and he had told Flint as much. The thought of doing a day’s worth of remodeling on that little sleep had almost brought him to tears.

Flint had cornered him with the threat that they would finish the conversation today and he had readily agreed, having no desire to anger Flint more than necessary.

How they had ended up discussing Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”, or how John had even ended up reading it out loud to begin with, was beyond him. 

John had locked himself in the downstairs washroom – not that a locked door would keep a ghost out but he could hope – and had gingerly washed around his wounds. Both were already turning violent shades of purple and his lip was swollen to half again its normal size. The ice had helped but he’d sport bruises for days.

If his clothes hadn’t smelled of booze and cigar smoke, he might have considered crashing in them – he had certainly been exhausted enough to fall asleep standing up – but neither smell had held much appeal so he had stripped and had thrown on an old rock t-shirt and sweats. He had grabbed his Poe collection off the counter and had settled down to read.

And he had started reading aloud when Flint had made his presence known, despite not physically appearing, the words falling from his lips without conscious thought. “True! Nervous – very, very nervous I had been and am! But why will you say that I am mad? …” 

The door flew open, startling him out of his reminiscing. _Are you planning on standing outside all day?_ Flint demanded.

“I’ve learned better than to trespass in this room without permission,” John informed him, keeping his voice light and teasing. “The last time I did, I ended up with a knife at my throat and that is not an experience I care to repeat. If you want me to come inside, you’ll have to invite me.”

Flint retreated and swung the door wide. _Please come in_ , he asked, all mocking sweetness.

John’s gaze fell onto the page as he walked into the room. He held it up. “How does this feature into your story from last night?”

_What makes you think one has anything to do with the other?_

John listed off his evidence. “You almost killed me yesterday when I told you I stole it. And last night you spun your yarn about your Spanish treasure. How could I not make the connection?”

Flint considered him momentarily.

John gave him the time and space to gather his thoughts. Or to determine whether or not to trust him.

_The map to the treasure is on the back._

He flipped the page over. It was still as blank as the last time he’d seen it. “Where?”

The air crackled with amusement. _Figure it out._

He rubbed his temple, careful to avoid his bruised eye. “That’s insane. ‘National Treasure’ level insane,” he muttered, almost to himself; he had already thought of two or three ways to uncover the map. He glanced over at Flint’s ghost. “You know this is insane, right?”

_I didn’t tell you for you to question my sanity,_ Flint snarled.

“No, I doubt you did,” John agreed easily. “But I must admit to some confusion as to why you did tell me. Why you told me any of it.”

Flint paced the room, the shadows dancing around him as he moved.

John’s gaze followed him, drawn as a moth would be to a flame. “Because the way I see it, I’m not the first person you _could_ have told.” He leaned back against the wall next to the door, careful not to turn his back to Flint. “So why me?”

It was, to his way of thinking, a very valid question. 

_It has nothing to do with you_ , Flint snapped, ceasing his pacing. The shadows in the room settled with him.

“Oh, I very much doubt that.”

The air around Flint thrummed with annoyance. And something else that John couldn’t quite place. _You think you’re worth a lot more than you are._

If John had a dollar for every time he’d heard that from people – suffice it to say he wouldn’t be in such dire straits with money now. Hearing it from Flint though… it stung. He crossed his arms over his chest, a barrier between him and Flint. A shield. “Do I though? How many people have owned or tried to own this house since Ms. Barlow?” 

Electricity crackled and what lights John had managed to get working flickered precariously. _Don’t say her name._

He held up his hands to keep Flint’s building fury at bay, especially at his mention of Barlow. “All I’m saying is you’ve had opportunities before now, opportunities that you very much could have taken. But you didn’t.” He tilted his head and captured Flint’s gaze with his own. “Which means you intended for us to have this conversation.”

Though Flint still had no definite shape, John easily imagined him regarding him with a thoughtful expression, his fury buried deep – John was not foolish enough to think it gone. Flint gazed at him like he was a puzzle to be solved but he refrained from offering an answer.

John leaned forward. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

There was nothing more foolish than pushing the buttons of a homicidal ghost and some part of John’s mind registered that. But there was a danger in it as well that was strangely appealing.

So John waited for Flint to give him an answer, or any manner of sign. 

But Flint remained silent.

John had to smile. For all that Flint seemed to be intelligent, dangerously so, and manipulative to boot, he had one or two tells that John had already figured out in the handful of conversations they’d had. “That’s what I thought.” He glanced back at the page but his gaze kept returning to Flint. “So let’s talk about finding this treasure of yours.”

Flint continued to stare at him. 

“That is why you told me, isn’t it?” John pressed. “You have it in your mind to go after it. And you need my help since you can’t leave the house.”

Flint leaned against the windowsill, more at home in this room than anywhere else in the house. 

John thought he was losing his mind but Flint’s form seemed to solidify slightly as they regarded each other. 

_You figured that out on your own?_

“You’d be surprised how little thought is required to lay hardwood,” John countered. 

It was an interesting position to find himself in but Flint seemed impressed. 

John hoped he could ride that through Flint’s fury at his next question. “I do have to ask what I get out of this arrangement.”

Flint chuckled, a strange sound that sent chills up John’s spine. _What makes you think you’ll get anything out of it?_

“What incentive do I have to help you if I don’t?” John threw back, answering Flint’s question with his own.

Flint was towering over him before he could blink. _I’m letting you live. In case you forgot._

John smiled – not a particularly warm smile, even though his heart thudded painfully in his chest. “And yet, I could leave any time I liked. What power would you have to come after me?”

They glared at each other, neither intending to back down. But John had the upper hand. Flint would yield – he had no choice.

_Whatever you think you’re trying to pull, don’t_ , Flint cautioned him. He remained close to John, peering down at him. _I fought off the British navy to protect that treasure. I killed my own quartermaster, my friend, for it._

John met his gaze evenly. “You know exactly what I’m trying to pull. I won’t keep it a secret. I won’t lie to you about it. A treasure like that, if I could find it – let’s just say a small portion would set me up for a long time.”

_And if I choose not to give it to you?_

“I don’t see how you have that choice,” John pointed out.

Flint leaned in and, had he been alive, John would have felt his breath on his face. 

He didn’t dare move or look away. 

Flint strode back to the window, turning his back to him. Had Flint been alive, that would have been a dangerous position to be in. But John could do no further physical damage to a dead man.

“Since I’d like to finish basic renovations before we start on this,” he spoke to Flint’s back, “we do have a few weeks.” He shrugged. “We might be friends by then.” The conscious awareness of the atrocity Flint committed against his last friend, by his own admission, sat roiling in the back of his mind.

Flint gazed at him over his shoulder, smiling that predatory smile again. _Keep telling yourself that._

John hastily retreated, his courage nearly gone, so he didn’t see the shadows that made up Flint’s form shift and solidify into something more resembling a human before falling apart again.

He had intended to finish painting the bedroom before nightfall so he poured a cup of paint from the gallon container, wiping the excess away with care so it wouldn’t drip. Cutting the room was the most tedious and difficult part of painting but it served as a welcome distraction. The odor of the paint as he slowly dragged his brush against the crown molding, the repetitive motion of dipping the brush into the paint, helped calm his mind after his encounter with Flint.

Any of their encounters felt like playing chess with a serial killer in a burning building and they left him drained, mentally and physically.

The day slipped into the afternoon. John finished the top of the walls and the sides, switching to the painful task of cutting the baseboards. He stopped for a quick dinner – a sandwich, nothing more.

_Where did you learn to paint?_

John finished cutting along the section he was on and laid the paintbrush over the cup. He stood, blinking back the stars in his eyes, every muscle in his legs protesting, and regarded Flint, who was examining – he could almost say admiring – his work thus far. 

Yet again, the man surprised him and put him on uncertain footing. Had another person asked him, he would have trusted his gut reaction and lied. Even the friends he’d made at university only knew the lies he had fed them. 

He couldn’t bring himself to lie to Flint.

“My first foster family,” he answered finally, simply. “The husband was a bitter, vicious alcoholic but he could paint a house in less than a day.”

_He passed some of that on to you?_

John chuckled. “How else would he have gotten done in less than a day?”

The meaning of his words sunk in, shocking Flint into silence.

Before Flint could fill the silence with a comment, whether out of curiosity or pity, John pulled the conversation back. “I seriously doubt, though, that you came all the way in here to comment on my painting ability.” 

_That’s correct._

John waited for Flint to elaborate further but Flint seemed content to wait and let him ask the questions. “Why did you come here then?”

_You want a portion of the treasure. Why?_

John outright laughed. “Is that a question you need to ask?” He considered Flint for a moment. “Why do you want it?” 

No answer.

He shook his head. “You are amazing, you know that?” he asked. “You want me to spill my life story but you refuse to give one straightforward answer. “ He took one step toward Flint. “You intend to make us rivals in this yet you were the one who asked for my help.” Another step. “We would work far better as partners and I think you bloody know it.”

_I told you to stop whatever you were trying to pull._ Flint’s voice was quiet, shaking in fury. And yet, almost sad. _It’s not welcome._

“No, apparently, it’s not.”

_Just leave._

John flinched at the dismissal, Flint’s words eerily echoing from his past. They overlapped and suddenly he couldn’t breathe. He forced himself to inhale and grit out, “I have a room to paint. You leave.” 

Flint stormed out, slamming the door behind him.

John clenched and unclenched his fists. He took several deep breaths as he counted to twenty. “God dammit,” he muttered. 

Over the next two days, he did not see Flint once nor did he seek him out. The upstairs room was as inaccessible to him as his life in London, which suited him fine. Two could play that game.

Working a shift at Eleanor’s tavern would be the first time he’d left the house since his last shift and he desperately needed the escape.

Even as he cleaned up, his gaze kept drifting up to Flint’s room. He tore out a piece of paper from the one notepad he owned and scribbled a note, which he left on the kitchen counter with his Poe collection. 

It was an olive branch in its own way. He just hoped Flint saw it as such.

Max pulled up the drive, honking the horn to get his attention. He darted down the stairs, taking them two at a time. He cast one last look at the upstairs window, half imagining Flint standing there, watching him leave, before he got into the car.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well this chapter thoroughly kicked my butt and I haven't even gotten to the hard stuff yet. I just couldn't get it quite right. So just bear with it :) Thanks to everyone for their kind words - they mean the world!


	4. Chapter 4

“Have you heard a word I said?” Mr. Scott asked.

John forced his gaze away from the bar’s proceedings – not that he was paying them any attention to begin with – and focused on Mr. Scott. The music, if you could call it that, drowned out most of what people around them were saying but Mr. Scott’s voice carried well. 

He opened his mouth to apologize. 

“You are distracted tonight,” Mr. Scott commented, cutting him off, though the scolding wasn’t harsh. “Luckily, we have an easy crowd. No troublemakers so far.”

John sipped his drink. A Coke, nothing more. He could work tipsy but getting drunk was not a luxury he could afford. “Have Vane and his lot not come back?” 

Mr. Scott scoffed. “They have, much to my dismay, much to Eleanor’s dismay, but since your scuffle, they’ve been more civil than I thought to give them credit for.” 

He scanned the tavern. “They’ve yet to show tonight,” he noted. Hopefully, saying the devil’s name didn’t make him appear.

“They’re planning something,” Mr. Scott added grimly. “Best to prepare while we have a moment.”

John’s conversation with Max played on repeat in his mind. Half concerned and half curious, he leaned over the table. “I know you were less than forthcoming the last time I asked but is there anything you can tell me about them? Vane and the rest?”

“Why the continued interest?” Mr. Scott replied, very deftly avoiding the question. 

He had one trump card to play, one that he hated to play, but he needed answers if he was going to continue to live on this island, with Max and with these other people. “Because I know there’s a history there with Max. And where she’s concerned, I need to know.”

“If you consider yourself her friend, you won’t mention that again, not to me, not to her, not to Eleanor.” His tone brooked no argument and he removed himself from the table, and thus the conversation.

John took another swig of Coke to settle his stomach. The more he learned about the goings on here in Nassau, the more he hated how isolated he had become back in England and how little it seemed he knew of Max’s life. Whatever had transpired between her, Eleanor, and Vane was worse than he’d first thought. But since Vane could not be bothered to show and Mr. Scott had proven less than forthcoming – and he wasn’t stupid enough to outright ask Eleanor – he turned his mind to the other pressing matter in his life.

That of Flint’s treasure.

Or, more accurately, Flint himself. His mind had drifted there off and on for most of the evening, which had prompted Mr. Scott’s original comment about him seeming distracted – he still was unsure what Mr. Scott had originally spoken to him about.

Of course, to say that he wasn’t interested in the treasure would be a boldfaced lie. But money was money, no matter where it came from. Flint was something…else.

His knowledge of ghosts was minimal, since he had had no reason to believe they existed until recently, but he assumed ghosts remained because they had something tethering them. It couldn’t be a coincidence that Flint appeared not long after he stole the page. Something about that treasure – maybe even the treasure itself – was holding him here. 

That or something about the first owner of the house. 

Miranda Barlow. The woman who didn’t exist, according to official records at the time.

He desperately wanted to find out about her but that would entail asking Flint and he doubted Flint would find that discussion very amenable. 

So wrapped up in those thoughts was he that he missed the beginning of a nearby conversation. But a couple of key words grabbed his attention.

“ – heard a rumor the British intelligence is searching for one of the old pirate caches buried here somewhere on one of the nearby islands.”

John sat his drink on the bar and turned toward the speaker, letting the conversation wash over him, tuning out the bad karaoke as best he could. The man was tall, even sitting down, his hair shorn short. He didn’t quite radiate the same level of dangerous as Vane but John could already tell this too was not a man to cross.

His companion, a shorter man in glasses, replied, “Why would they be interested in that old stuff?”

The first one shrugged. “Didn’t hear that bit and don’t care really.” He downed about half his glass of whatever alcoholic poison he had. “Can you imagine what they’d give to the folks that found it though?”

John didn’t need to hear the rest. Whatever had happened between him and Flint – and he still wasn’t sure what exactly had happened - they’d have to put it behind them because they needed to figure this out. He needed to figure this out. That treasure was his ticket out of here, back to England, and he would be damned if the British took anything else from him.

He stood a bit too quickly, the world spinning dangerously. It’d been a mistake not eating dinner before coming in. He clutched the table for balance, draining what was left of his drink. This close to closing time, his shift was essentially over, so he exited the bar, throwing a half-assed salute to Eleanor, who only glared at him. With such a hasty retreat, it was sinfully easy to avoid the anger that seemed to have settled in her eyes since Vane’s arrival.

He had every intention of asking Max for her car to drive home but he froze at the sight of one of Vane’s crew – one of the women – walking up the stairs to her apartment. He watched Max greet her with a kiss. That had the possibility to be very much a not good thing but he had no intention of starting a fight tonight. If anything, he was saving that for Flint. He burrowed further in his jacket and walked down the street, the music from the bar trailing behind him, whispering to him – taunting him.

“You keep asking questions you don’t want to know the answers to.”

John froze at the voice but kept his level as he replied, “Beg pardon?”

Vane stepped out of the shadows, the glow from his cigar illuminating his face. “Your friend. Max.” He nodded up at her apartment where she and Vane’s crewmember had disappeared inside. “You’ve figured we’ve got a history and you’re asking questions. No one will tell you the answers.”

“And I assume you’re going to tell me why not?”

“Because no one in this town is dumb enough to cross me. Your friend learned it. Your boss learned it.” He crowded into John’s personal space, breathing cigar smoke over him. “If you keep asking questions, I’ll make sure you learn it too.” He looked John over. “You, know, I’ve heard a lot about that old Barlow manor. Lots of secrets kept locked away.”

John’s blood ran cold. He swallowed, not quite believing, not quite disbelieving that another person could know of the page and its relation to the location of Flint’s treasure. “Are you threatening me?”

Vane hummed, smiled, at the point he’d driven home. “Catch you tomorrow, Silver.” He stamped out his cigar, and sauntered off into the night, leaving John shell shocked on the side of the road.

There was only one way forward that he could see and Flint wouldn’t like it. 

John shook his head. Fuck Flint – death afforded him opportunities against Vane that John and Max and the others did not have. If Vane wanted to play a game, John was willing to set the rules. Flint had no say in that. John couldn’t afford to let him.

He stopped at the only open convenience store for food – he wolfed down a granola bar as he waited at the checkout counter – and necessary supplies and caught a taxi home as the sky slowly brightened from black to hazy grey. 

Flint did not appear when he kicked the front door shut or when he sat the bags of food and other material on the counter. Some small part of him was glad of it. In his current state, shaken from his encounter with Vane, he could not have handled conversing with the captain. He still had no idea how to approach him with the evening’s developments.

Vane’s words weaseled their way into his head and spoke to horrors he’d only begun to scratch the surface of. If Vane had laid a hand on Max…John wasn’t sure how he would handle that.

But Vane’s threat was serious and John had every intention of removing as many variables from their equation as possible to tip the scales in his favor. If anyone other than Max stood to benefit, that was sheer happenstance. 

Despite exhaustion setting it, and him struggling to fight the growing heaviness of his eyelids, he bounded upstairs, two at a time, and grabbed the page from Flint’s room.

But his luck, such as it was, couldn’t hold. Flint was waiting for him in the kitchen when he returned. _Are you stupid enough to steal that again?_

John fought the urge to roll his eyes. “If I wanted to steal it, I wouldn’t be stupid enough to stay here.”

Flint looked him over. _I see you managed not to provoke anyone tonight._

John started unloading the bags of supplies, needing the few seconds that provided to fully wrap his mind around the fact that Flint was…teasing him? 

Christ, he was not in the mood for that. Something darker laced his reply, which came out sharp, barbed – the fear that normally accompanied his interactions with Flint was nowhere to be found. “Not for lack of trying,” he scoffed, feeling the weight of the night bear down just a little harder. “If you’re disappointed, we’ve just started talking. I’m sure I’ll say or do something to piss you off.” 

The shadows shifted behind him. _Something’s wrong._

John glared at him over his shoulder before shoving the boxes of pasta in the cabinet. “No shit, Sherlock,” he muttered.

_That’s not my name,_ Flint replied, annoyed and confused in equal measure.

John repeated the sentence, raising his voice. It worked both to reiterate the thought and to respond to Flint’s inane comment.

Flint narrowed his eyes, a subtle movement of shadows. _If it has to pertain to our earlier discussion, I’d like to know._ He nodded at the page on the counter. _I’m assuming it is._

John outright laughed at that. “Is that all the fuck you care about?” When Flint didn’t respond, he continued. “Of course it is. Why did I even ask?” He slammed a jar onto the counter. “Would it surprise you to learn that I have other shit in my life that I worry about?” He faced Flint, leaning back, his arms crossed. 

They stared at each other, a battle of wills. But John had no intention of letting it continue all day so he added, “I did, however, hear one piece of very interesting news tonight that might actually concern us.”

Flint edged forward, his curiosity and impatience almost overpowering.

The smarter option would be just to tell him but John refused to play it safe with Flint. Pushing his buttons was far more entertaining and after the events of the evening, John had no self-preservation. He resumed his task of putting groceries away, holding his breath. Waiting.

_Just fucking say it._

He took a deep breath, his shoulders heaving with it. “I overhead two men talking tonight, which normally I wouldn’t pay any mind to – it is a bar after all – but they were discussing two things that seemed _very_ out of place. One was the British intelligence and the other, your treasure.”

Flint strode to the window, gazing out at the sunrise but his attention was inward, and on John. _What does one have to do with the other?_

“Normally, nothing. But I heard that the British were looking for your treasure.”

_They can’t have it,_ Flint snarled, bearing down on him as if he were the instigator. 

John scoffed in his face, despite every nerve, every coiled muscle, begging him to run. “I’d love to hear why not. Any idiot with a metal detector and YouTube can find gold if they work at it. Hell, even I could find it. What resources do you think Britain has to throw at it?”

Flint’s fury did not roar or scream. It was quiet, the deep breath before the storm that shook the entire house – the very foundation creaked in protest. Before John could add anything, Flint disappeared.

The house exhaled with his departure.

So did John.

If he had to bet, he would say Flint had retreated to his room upstairs but he had no intention of joining him. At least, not until that anger had abated to survivable levels. He finished unpacking his groceries, sitting the lemons out in a bowl and the cheap hairdryer and black light beside them. When Flint wasn’t quite…whatever he was being, he’d run his ideas for reading the back of the page past him.

The sooner he pried those secrets out, the better. If what Vane hinted at was accurate, he doubted the British were the only party interested in Flint’s treasure. And if Vane knew as much as he let on, he would be one of those interested parties and would be just as large a problem, if not larger.

He had no illusions of how Flint would react to the news of Vane’s threats. Or how Flint would react to the stunt he planned on pulling to keep Vane at bay. Not that he planned to tell him beforehand. His first foster parents had been neglectful to a fault but they taught him one valuable life lesson outside of his painting skills: it was always better to ask forgiveness than permission.

A loud crash from upstairs startled him, his head snapping up in the direction of the noise. Another crash followed and the lights flickered.

When he entered Flint’s room, he found what had once been neat stacks of books were now piles, pages strewn across the floor.

His gaze shifted to the figure standing across from him. For a moment, instead of shadows, John saw Flint as he was, the captain that had terrorized the Caribbean. Bent over the windowsill, coat draped over his shoulders, red hair vibrant even in the shadowed room.

He held utterly still, afraid any movement would break the spell.

Flint tensed, barely moving, but enough for John to notice, the motion alien in a way. “I don’t know what to do,” he whispered so softly John almost didn’t hear him. Something in his voice, in those words, told John they weren’t meant for him. Flint’s shoulders dropped and his head lowered, all his wind gone, leaving him adrift in the doldrums.

John took in the lines of Flint’s shoulders, the despair wrapped around them as Flint bore the weight of the world, and everything clicked: the page, the treasure, Flint himself. “You don’t remember how to find the treasure, do you?” John murmured. “That’s why that page is so damn important.”

Flint glanced at him over his shoulder, giving him his first look at the man himself – the piercingly intelligent green eyes set in a weather worn face.

Those eyes captivated him, dragged him into their depths. He had the sudden urge to draw out every emotion swirling there, bring them to light and give them their due. He nodded at the page on the windowsill at Flint’s side. “I might have a way to read it.” 

With a little coaxing, a fair amount of lemon juice, and liberal application of heat from the hair dryer – they weren’t in _National Treasure_ he reminded himself, they slowly revealed what Flint informed him was a copy of a ship’s log. The Spanish treasure ship’s log, to be precise. A second hand had written another set of coordinates at the bottom.

_I know these coordinates. I remember them,_ Flint mused. _An island off the coast of Florida._

To distract himself from the strangeness of watching Flint talk, seeing his mouth sound out and form words, but still hearing the rush of air and the creaking of the house as his voice, John ran the calculations in his head and didn’t like what he came up with. “I guess the question then becomes how do I get there and how do I bring the treasure back.”

Flint shifted at his side, stepping back. _I assume you still want your portion._

John wondered how best to frame his answer. He glanced over at Flint. “Considering the investment I’ll have to make up front and considering I don’t actually have that money yet, that would be nice. Yes.”

Flint regarded him for a long moment and John had to force himself not to fidget under the scrutiny. _That’s not all, is it?_

John wondered if Flint had reached the same conclusion he had or if he’d simply seen something of the gears turning in his eyes. “Well, if there’s as much there as you claim, retrieving it all in one trip might not be possible alone.” He nodded at Flint. “And you can’t accompany me.”

_If you bring others in on this, what’s to stop them from wanting their share?_

“Absolutely nothing at all,” John admitted easily. “But wouldn’t that be more amenable than having it fall into the hands of the British? Besides, what on earth could you possibly do with all that treasure? I mean, you’re not exactly in a position to spend it.”

Flint fell apart, whatever act of will that held him together disappearing. Instead of talking to the man, John found himself once again talking to shadows.

He inexplicably missed speaking to the man and wondered at the same time what had happened in Flint’s mind to break that control.

_Who did you have in mind?_ Though Flint’s voice was level, John tasted the dull ache of pain long buried running as an undercurrent beneath those words.

“I thought I’d approach the men I overheard earlier. If they say no,” he shrugged, “I’ll cross that bridge if I come to it.”

_What will you say to convince them?_

John smiled to himself. “You’d be surprised how easy men are to manipulate. I’m certain I can figure something out.”

Flint arched an eyebrow, or as close as shadows could get. _Is that so?_

John bit down on a yawn but as he opened his mouth to reply, he yawned anyway. “Something like that,” he managed to say. 

_You should get some rest_ , Flint informed him, gruff and yet far gentler than John had ever thought he could be, before disappearing once again, the shadows fading against the rising sun.

He showered quickly, throwing his clothes reeking of alcohol and cigar smoke into a corner. Toweling his hair dry, he settled on his air mattress with one of the other books Max had brought him as the early morning sun shone through the windows. It wasn’t an old edition but the pages of Tolkien’s translation of _Beowulf_ were yellowed on the edges where he’d flipped them hundreds of times. 

Once he was certain Flint would not return, he grabbed the page from the table and set about memorizing its secrets. He needed to destroy it before Vane or anyone else got their hands on it.

When Flint woke him later that afternoon, it was safely hidden inside his book tucked away at the bottom of the duffel bag.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The response to this story has been beyond my wildest dreams. Or beyond even that. Thanks to everyone for reading and sticking with it.


	5. Chapter 5

John fell into a routine, working nights at Eleanor’s tavern – avoiding Vane and his crew – and spending his days working on one small remodeling project at a time. In the time he spent free of Flint, free of anyone, he poured over the page until he could rewrite it exactly from memory.

Having the page tucked into his book burned him. His gaze kept sliding to it when his mind wandered as he worked. The guilt at betraying Flint colored the edges of his thoughts though he kept beating it back with the protest that he wasn’t actually betraying him. It wasn’t as if he were stealing the treasure out from under him, though it had crossed him mind more than once to do so.

He wasn’t quite sure were he now stood with Flint, which only made the conundrum worse. Flint obviously needed his help but how far their partnership went past that, he had no idea. The thought that he was only a tool to be used and promptly discarded made him physically ill. He couldn’t live through that again. If that meant stealing the treasure for himself and letting Flint rot along with the house, so be it.

So he and Flint danced around each other, an intricate balance of avoidance and happenstance interactions. Sometimes, Flint joined him in whichever room he was working and, less frequently, offered advice. Those interactions, though stilted, were the most real of any they had had. Sometimes, John felt his presence in the kitchen as he settled in to read before falling asleep, though he did not once physically appear. Those times, John read aloud from whichever book he had chosen, some unnamed emotion emanating from Flint like gentle waves lapping at the shore. Every other emotion, and any combination thereof, John could figure out but whatever Flint felt in those moments remained a mystery.

In those moments, John could imagine this whole endeavor would succeed and the entire house of cards he was building wouldn’t crash down around his head.

Of course, if the two men he’d overheard that night did not come back to Eleanor’s tavern, it wouldn’t even get off the ground and nothing could maintain such a holding pattern forever. Sooner of later, something had to give. John expected it to be Flint, almost needed it to be Flint – whether over the page or something else, it didn’t matter. He needed some acknowledgment of whatever the fuck they were, whether it be enemies or allies, partners, even friends.

He never expected it to be Vane.

He was wiping down the bar when Vane walked into the bar one Sunday night a few weeks after their last encounter – which he had desperately tried to forget. Eleanor had already gone home for the night, leaving him to lock up. He looked up at the sudden noise and tried not to panic at the five men running point behind Vane. “Sorry, boys, but we’re closed for the night,” he informed them.

They didn’t leave but they didn’t approach him either. Vane lit a cigar, inhaling deeply. “Make an exception.”

John chuckled as he hung the rag up behind the bar. “And risk Eleanor’s wrath?” He sized them up. Baiting Flint was better practice than he’d thought. Whereas talking with Flint had the thrill of danger, of the unknown – John never knew if it would go well or poorly – talking to Vane always went poorly. And with that certainty, John wasn’t afraid.

Vane motioned his men forward with a flick of his head. “Who do you fear more? Me or Eleanor?”

Seeing no other option open to him, John poured six shots of whiskey. On the house, of course. He let that be his answer. This might not end well – correction: it wouldn’t end well – but John was nothing if not curious about what Vane wanted.

Vane downed his in a single gulp. “Now, let’s talk about Captain Flint’s treasure.”

“Who the fuck is Captain Flint and what do I care about his treasure?” John replied, refilling the glass. Their previous encounter started to make more sense.

Somewhat.

Vane pressed forward, breathing smoke into John’s face. “Captain Flint was a pirate captain who committed suicide in your house but not before burying a large portion of the treasure he stole from Spain on an island only he knew the location of. He is a rather popular figure on the island. I know Eleanor mentioned him to you. Now you’re telling me you’ve never heard of him?”

John shrugged. “I’ve heard the name in passing.” He waved away the cloud of smoke. “I still fail to see why I should care about him.”

The man to Vane’s right grabbed John by the collar and yanked him forward. John coughed as the impact with the bar drove his insides into each other. He stilled at the press of metal to his temple, a cold shot of fear pouring through him. He’d prepared himself for a beat down. Guns, he wasn’t prepared for.

Vane glanced at his henchman, gave him a subtle shake of his head. “Let’s try that again.”

His self-preservation demanded he spill everything, demanded he give up the location of the treasure and with it, all that Flint had left in the world. His brain murmured its regret at losing the treasure but the adrenaline coursing through him, through his pounding heart, only whispered Flint’s name. He ground his teeth together and gave Vane the only answer he could. “Fuck you.”

Pain blossomed across his face – a fist from another of Vane’s men landing a solid blow.

The man who gripped him by the collar dragged him over the bar. Fists and feet, knees and elbows, morphed into one ferocious monster intent on tearing him apart piece by piece. He fell to the ground, coughing up blood, his vision whiting out at the searing pain shooting across his chest.

“You’ll tell us,” Vane told him, smug in his knowledge he was right.

“Go to hell,” John muttered.

A gunshot rang out, a clear, sharp sound against the muddled background of landing blows.

Silence followed though the echoes of each blow rang in his ears.

“If any of you want to see tomorrow, you’ll get the fuck out of my bar.”

The last thing John saw before embracing the darkness creeping up on him was Eleanor tracking Vane and his men with a rifle as they left the bar.

…

“How the fuck could you be so stupid?”

John blinked, the lights above him too bright. He groaned and struggled to sit up. 

Firm hands held him down. “Do not try to move,” another voice told him. “Give yourself a minute.” 

John frowned. Where had Mr. Scott come from? Why was Eleanor there? “Where am I?”

Eleanor leaned over him, her face slowly coming into focus. “You’re still in my bar. As soon as you’re able to move, Mr. Scott will take you home.”

They helped him sit up. Pain held his chest in a vise – he couldn’t get a breath, couldn’t gasp or cry out. 

“What the fuck were you thinking, provoking Vane like that?” Eleanor demanded.

John glanced up at her, confused. “Me provoke him?” he asked indignantly. “He attacked me. Entirely without provocation, I might add.”

“What was he doing here?”

“He wanted to know about Captain Flint, I think. And something about a treasure?” He met Eleanor’s gaze. “I can’t imagine why he thought I’d have any idea about that.” Someone had talked to Vane, but he couldn’t figure out, for the life of him, who.

Eleanor pursed her lips and paced the room. “I’ve heard more than one person mention a treasure in the last few weeks. I don’t know why Vane’s singled you out – the only relation Flint had to your house was that he died in it. Nothing more.”

If she only knew how wrong she was.

She sighed. “There’s nothing we can do about it tonight and you’re in no shape to work until you’ve recovered.” She looked John over. “Are you still sleeping on the air mattress?”

“Yes?” John couldn’t quite follow the sharp turn in their conversation.

She nodded at Mr. Scott. “We’ll get you a bed. You’ll never get anywhere with those cracked ribs otherwise.”

At least that explained why his chest hurt so badly.

“Shouldn’t I go to the hospital?”

Mr. Scott shook his head. “Your organs suffered no damage. The ribs did not pierce your lungs. It will hurt but you will recover.”

John could accept that. Once he was able to breathe.

“Can you walk?” Mr. Scott asked, holding out his hand.

He took it. With help, he thought he could limp to a car but he doubted he’d be capable of much past that.

The drive to his house was quiet, tense, every bump sending pain radiating from his chest. Something had shifted with this altercation with Vane, something dangerous. Both he and Mr. Scott felt it but neither had any power to stop it.

Mr. Scott helped him up the stairs to his front door, meeting whatever protests John had with protests of his own and only left once he had settled into one of his kitchen chairs, with a promise to have a bed delivered before the day was out.

John listened to the car putt down the driveway. He closed his eyes and pushed past the pain to take a couple of deep breaths. Each hurt worse than the last but Christ, he needed to breathe. If he could move, he would burn the page and get rid of any evidence of Flint and his treasure but his entire world had narrowed into a dull ache only interrupted by shooting pains. He wouldn’t be doing anything fast.

He felt Flint approach, felt what he could only describe as irritation – the sharp tang of quick, staccato sparks of electricity – before Flint made his presence known. _What the fuck happened to you?_  
“I managed to provoke someone,” he retorted, keeping his eyes closed. He tried to shift into a more comfortable position but swiftly learned he couldn’t. “Multiple someones, actually.”

_I can see that,_ Flint replied, scowling, his face only half formed of shadows. Over the past days, he’d learned whatever control he needed to at least partway hold his form. _What did you do to piss them off?_

“They wanted certain information. I refused to give it to them.” He finally opened his eyes and looked up at Flint standing over him. He quirked an eyebrow.

Flint rocked back on his heels, eyes widening slightly.

John smirked and immediately regretted the motion.

_Why didn’t you tell them?_

John could read nothing in Flint’s face, the emotions disturbing the air around him unknown. He tried not to laugh. Had he been able to, it would have been a fragile, bitter thing. To think, he’d brought this on himself to protect Flint. He knew his mind and before he’d told Vane to fuck off, the thought of losing the treasure was a small, fleeting thing that paled in comparison to other, more pressing matters – to protecting Flint. 

He couldn’t afford to continue that avenue of thought. This only worked if he gave a damn about the treasure, about what he could get from Flint because of it. “I have a vested interest in ensuring they didn’t know about the treasure.” He swallowed past the ash of the lie and the bitter taste it left in his mouth.

At least Flint accepted his answer, though he thought he saw a glimpse into the well of sadness Flint kept buried. _Where are you hurt?_

Staring at Flint as his eyes softened in concern, John felt something unravel inside him. “Honestly? Fucking everywhere.” The need to move, to escape those eyes, gnawed at him. He supported his weight against the table as he tried to stand.

_What the fuck are you doing?_

He met Flint’s steely gaze. “I have three cracked ribs and a handful more serious bruises anywhere they could land a blow. I’m getting ice. And Advil.”

Flint towered over him, glared down at him. _Sit down._

He made no attempt to move. The words _make me_ hovered in the air.

Flint stepped forward until there was almost no space separating them. “Sit down.”

Hearing Flint’s real voice shocked John into actually obeying. His eyes followed Flint as he moved around the kitchen, finding what he needed with perfect ease – like he’d done it a thousand times before, like he belonged there. When Flint offered him a bag of ice and the bottle of Advil, he gaped at him, thoroughly unable to process what the fuck was happening.

_Do you want the ice or not?_

He reached out for pain meds first, every muscle on autopilot, unable to look away from Flint’s eyes. Maybe three pills were too many but right now, his only concern was to numb the pain. And to not drown in Flint. He sat the bottle on the table beside him and grabbed the bag of ice, pressing it to his chest. He winced at the contact, his breathing shallow, but the ice helped numb the pain.

_You need to keep breathing_ , Flint informed him. _Even though it hurts._

“Easier said than done,” he retorted.

Flint dragged another chair around the table and settled on it in front of him. _I’ve seen my fair share of cracked and broken ribs. You_ need _to take deep breaths._

John leaned back in his chair, grimacing at the slight movement. “Not that I’m doubting your experience but why are you telling me this?”

_I have a vested interest in you retrieving my treasure. Your dying of pneumonia doesn’t accomplish that goal._

John tried not to flinch at his own lie being hurled back at him, whether or not Flint knew he was lying. He suspected Flint did know.

Flint’s eyes revealed nothing.

He almost jumped out of his skin when his phone rang, reluctantly dragging his gaze away to check who was calling.

Max’s voice came through. “Mr. Scott is on his way with your bed.”

John’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Okay – no, wait a minute, how do you know about that?” 

The silence was answer enough. It didn’t matter whether Eleanor or Mr. Scott or even Max’s late night visitor had told her. She knew and she was pissed. “I’m coming with him and heaven help me, John Silver, we’re going to talk.”

John stared at the phone after Max hung up and exhaled out through his nose.

_What will you tell her?_

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know. I really don’t know.”

Flint rose from the chair, already fading away. _You might want to figure it out._

John stared at the space Flint had been standing before closing his eyes.

Mr. Scott arrived, with Max close behind him, not half an hour later. 

John limped to the door to let them in. 

Mr. Scott glanced between him and Max and quietly removed himself to haul the bed frame, mattress, and box springs inside.

He motioned Max into the kitchen when she slid into the seat Flint so recently vacated.

“What are you doing, John?”

John groaned, half in pain and half in frustration. “If this has to do with what happened tonight…”

“You know it does. Damn it, I told you not to anger him.” Anger flared in her eyes.

John snorted. “You told me no such thing. I asked – you hedged. I let it drop.”

Max sighed. “Please, whatever he wanted, when he asks again, give it to him.”

Something in her voice set off a warning bell. Both Vane and Max had already alluded to their past interactions – he couldn’t think about what Vane had done to her. How long could he string Vane along before he faced serious repercussions? He glanced over at the doorway and saw Flint standing there, even though Max’s gaze slid through him. “I can’t, Max. I’m sorry.”

“He’ll kill you,” she whispered. 

He grasped her hand. “What happened between you and Vane – I want you to tell me. Not today but soon. Because I am going to cross him again and I know next to nothing about him.”

“You came here to get away from something – you haven’t told me what – and yet now you’re willing to risk your life. For what?”

“At the risk of sounding cliché, the opportunity of a lifetime.” He felt Flint’s eyes scrutinize him as he continued, “The chance to be free.”

Max squeezed his hand. “You are free, _mon cher_. Here you can do what you want, be who you want. Why would you risk that?”

He didn’t have a good answer for her.

They sat in silence until Mr. Scott announced he’d finished assembling the bed. Between the three of them, somehow John got up the stairs and settled against a mountain of pillows.

Max brought another bag of ice and some of his books and sat them next to the bed. She kissed his forehead before they left. “Rest well. I expect to be back here remodeling soon.” Her voice was light but the smile she gave him was jittery, worried.

_I can’t decide if you’re stubborn or stupid._ Flint stood in the doorway after Max and Mr. Scott had seen themselves out, hovering there as if hesitant to come closer. He really seemed enjoyed calling John stupid – he made a point every other time they spoke to let him know what he thought.

John sat up. “I’m afraid I might be a bit of both.” He glanced over. Though Flint was mostly human, he frayed at the edges, the shadows skipping and dancing. Flint’s emotions skittered over him, raising gooseflesh on his exposed skin. A storm roiled in Flint’s eyes so John waited for him to gather his thoughts and say his mind.

_You could just walk away. What reason do you have to stay?_

He frowned. “Sorry, are you trying to talk me out of helping you? After all the shit you’ve given me over the past few weeks? After I took a beating to protect your fucking treasure?”

Flint shut down, every wall firmly resurrected, every emotion carefully contained. He stormed out without another word.

John swore. This was not something they could leave hanging. Cracked ribs or not, they were finishing this. Despite the stabbing pain that accompanied every step, he staggered out of bed and down the hall to Flint’s room. To see Flint’s double take sent a thrill of victory down his spine. He must have looked quite the sight. “You didn’t answer my question.”

_You failed to answer mine._

Fueled as he was by anger, the lie that fell from his lips didn’t taste quite so terrible. “I’ve told you why I’m in this. Have you not heard me?”

_You’re telling me you’d risk your life for money?_

“Did you not do the same?” John snapped. “You cannot possibly expect me to believe that in all your wanderings and going after treasure that you never once risked your life.” He swayed, unable to take a full breath, his ribs pressing in on his lungs.

Flint caught his arm and steadied him. _I risked my life for it. I risked others’ lives for it. And in the end, we died for it. All of us._

John smiled bitterly. “Then having one more mark in that ledger shouldn’t bother you.”

Flint said nothing, the fleeting sadness returning, and John offered no protest at having help back to his own room, the cold, almost not there, touch of a ghost sending tendrils of fear through him despite knowing it was Flint who supported him.

John settled back in his bed and waited for Flint to get the fuck out.

But Flint had other plans. _Which book did you intend on reading next?_

“ _The Hobbit_ ,” John replied after a moment to follow the jump in their conversation. “Why? I’m not up to it today.”

The expression Flint offered wasn’t much but the sharp edges of his smirk softened, the frown lines around his eyes smoothed out. He scanned the stack of books. When he had found _The Hobbit_ , Flint settled at the foot of the bed though the mattress did not dip under him. As he started to read aloud, John could only stare but Flint’s voice, and the caress of such a well-known story, soon enticed his thoughts away from his cracked ribs, Vane, and the treasure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've loved reading everyone's comments. The feedback I've gotten has been beyond awesome! I mean, I gush over it - I do.


	6. Chapter 6

_He ran down endless halls, bleeding words oozing out around him, chasing him._

_They followed him, matching his speed, no matter how face he ran – his parents, his friends, their eyes alight in condemnation._

_Though they shouted at him, words falling from the mouths, he couldn’t hear anything._

_The cold metal of the gun settled against his temple._

_He thought it was Vane but he glanced over to find Flint behind the gun._

John gasped and slowly relaxed his grip on the sheets tangled around him. The sheets clung to his skin, soaked in sweat. He stumbled into the bathroom and splashed handfuls of water onto his face. “You’ve been cooped up too long, Silver,” he muttered to himself.

Though his chest still ached, he no longer needed ice packs every time he turned around and he had reduced his daily intake of pain medication to almost nothing. His bruises had blossomed into explosions of purple fading into sickly yellow green across his skin. They weren’t pretty but they no longer hurt.

Flint, for his part, had mostly left him alone to recover. The first few days he’d brought ice and took up the mantle of reading before John fell asleep but past that, he’d made himself scarce. Even when John resumed reading, Flint did not appear.

Whatever emotions that conjured in John, he attributed them to the weakness of the moment and brushed them aside. Or he thought he had. They crept up on him, usually alongside the guilt he’d become so very accustomed to these past days. He shouldn’t have gotten so attached to so simple an action but he had.

“Are you all right?”

John jumped out of his skin at Flint’s voice. “Christ, don’t do that,” he gritted out, his chest constricting. He leaned over the sink and inhaled deeply. The image of Flint holding a gun to his head was not one his brain so easily dismissed.

It shook him.

He had no illusions of how Flint would react to him stealing the page, no matter the reason. He mustered what strength he had coming out of the nightmare to meet Flint’s gaze in the mirror. “I’m fine. Everything still…hurts if I move just right but…” he turned, “I’ll manage.” He pushed past Flint to get back to his room.

_You cried out_ , Flint called after him.

He froze, his body suddenly unable to respond to his brain. His nightmares were his, and his alone, the only scars he bore from the events that forced him across the ocean. They were not something he would share with anyone. Not Max and certainly not Flint. “That happens. It’s nothing.” And he told himself that’s all it was.

He silently pleaded for Flint to let the matter drop as he climbed into bed and burrowed under the sheets. If he could shake off the adrenaline, he might catch a few more hours of sleep before sunup. Working nights at Eleanor’s, he had almost forgotten what it was like to sleep at night, without the sun shining in his eyes. Despite his injuries, he almost felt human.

Flint remained in his room, a silent sentinel.

John could feel his gaze boring holes into the back of his head even through the sheets he’d thrown over him. Thoughts whirled around in his head, none of which he particularly cared to examine – thoughts that pondered why Flint appeared in the first place, why he felt the need to check on him. He could rationalize that Flint was concerned about the agent most capable to retrieve his treasure but he knew that wasn’t the whole truth. 

It couldn’t explain some of Flint’s actions.

He threw the sheets off again. “Sorry, did you need something?”

It would follow the status quo if Flint did need something. But Flint listening to John read, reading to John – those very much upset that. Which left John thoroughly in the dark about Flint’s intentions now. 

Flint’s expression was unreadable, his eyes shining in the darkness. Whatever occupied Flint’s mind carried him away from the present, whether to the past or the future, John couldn’t say. 

The urge to ask Flint where he was, where he had wandered to, almost overpowered him. He opened his mouth, the question stuck in his throat, but he forced it back. Even if he asked, he doubted Flint’s response would be much more than suspicion, wariness born of years of experiences John couldn’t reach.

When Flint’s gaze finally cleared, his focus returning to the present, his eyes snapped to John’s, widening in surprise. _It appears not._ He vanished from the spot, not even bothering to use the door.

John massaged his forehead where a massive headache threatened to explode, careful to avoid the still sore bruises around his cheeks and eyes. If he ever figured out the fucking puzzle that was Captain James Flint, he would eat his own left shoe.

Flint was no more forthcoming that morning. In fact, he was nowhere to be seen as John gingerly worked on repairing the floor in another of the upstairs’ bedrooms. John kept glancing over his shoulder in the direction of Flint’s room but he had no desire to stir up that particular hornets’ nest.

If asked, he would say the house was coming along nicely. Half of the rooms were ready for furniture – the floors replaced and walls painted. Given another few months uninterrupted and he could have it finished. 

He shot Eleanor a text when he stopped for lunch, asking about the two men he had overheard discussing Flint’s treasure. The reply came back as he sat on the porch, watching the first of the afternoon’s storms roll through. She informed him they were regulars, only dropped in occasionally, and they were coming due. She didn’t ask why he wanted to know but that was how their relationship, if it could be called that, worked.

If he had any plans to bring them into his treasure hunting madness, he’d have to return to work and soon. 

He sent Eleanor another message. 

She replied almost immediately.

He read her response and smiled. If only for a night, he was getting out of the house and getting away from Flint, which would hopefully let his mind settle. He needed time away to figure out how to play Vane to his advantage and how to get Flint to trust him despite what he would have to do with the page – all in one fell swoop. He had no ideas yet. 

Eleanor gave him easy tasks for the evening, which he was thankful for. Standing too long or moving too much exacerbated his ribs and he intended to get home in one piece, under his own faculties.

He was wiping out glasses from the wash when he saw them come in – the two men he’d been waiting for. He slid into the empty seat at their table with no introduction. “Evening, gentlemen.”

The man wearing glasses arched an eyebrow. “I don’t recall either of us saying you could sit there.”

John smiled. If the goal was to make him uncomfortable, it would fail. Once he had his sight on a prize, nothing stopped him. “No, you didn’t. But I can’t help but recall a conversation I overheard a few weeks ago, one about a certain treasure?” He glanced from one man to the other. “You weren’t exactly quiet about it.”

The other man leaned forward. “What’s it to you?”

“I might have a way to find it.”

The second one, the taller one, crossed his arms. “Word on the street is Vane tried to beat that information out of you – that’s why you ain’t been here. But you didn’t give it to him. So why give it to us?”

John shrugged. “Because you haven’t tried to beat it out of me. And I would like to keep it that way.”

Neither appeared convinced.

He sighed. “See, I know that the treasure is more than any one person could haul. I need extra hands and I would prefer not to go to Vane. Especially after our little confrontation.”

“What would be in it for us? Why wouldn’t we just take the treasure from you, give it to the British for the finders’ fee?”

John anticipated this, prepared for it. “Why turn the treasure in for a meager fee when you could take a portion of the treasure for yourselves?” He waited for them to make a decision – he doubted it would take long.

“What’s your name?”

“John Silver.”

“Well, Mr. Silver, it’ll be a pleasure doing business with you.”

Over the next hours, when John wasn’t manning the bar or helping some of Eleanor’s other employees out, he learned a tiny bit about his new colleagues. The taller one, Billy, and the man wearing glasses, Dufresne, both hailed from England though John doubted much of their stories past that held any amount of truth. 

Not that he really cared.

His certainly didn’t.

He couldn’t even remember the lie he’d spun on the drive home. Not that it mattered – it would never again come up in their dealings.

All that mattered was that their phone numbers checked out – both did.

His phone rang as he shut and locked the front door. He expected it to be one of them but he saw it was Max.

“Max, what is it?” he asked, answering the call.

Her voice shook. “John, they’re coming. Vane’s men. You need to get out of there.”

He closed his eyes and forced breaths in through his nose. He expected Vane to react, and not well, but he didn’t think it would happen this quickly. “Thank you.” He ended the call and grabbed the duffel bag where he had stashed the page.

_What are you doing?_

He didn’t flinch at Flint’s approach or the accusation in his question. He yanked the page out of the duffel bag and turned to Flint. “Saving my neck.” The universe had laid the perfect solution in his lap – he just needed to get Flint on board with it.

Flint’s eyes followed him around the kitchen as he searched for his lighter. _You’re going to destroy it._

“Are you going to stop me?” John intended for it to be a challenge and Flint did not disappoint to view it as such.

The house shuddered under the quiet anger. 

In any other situation, John would have cowered under that anger but he trusted his knowledge of its nuances. He could talk Flint down. He huffed, pausing his search. “Do you really want more red in your ledger? Do you want my death on your hands?” He stepped toward Flint. “Because once Vane’s men get here, what do you think they’ll do? They’ll search the house. They’ll find the page. And they’ll determine my value to be quite lacking and I would rather not follow that through to its conclusion.” 

Flint glared at him. _I won’t let you. I can’t._

John held up the lighter, pointed at Flint accusingly. “If you want to stop me, do it. But if you do, I will leave and I won’t come back.”

Flint made no further move toward him but he didn’t back away either.

“You’re actually considering it, aren’t you?” John asked, surprised as the realization sank in how badly that hurt. “Do you really not trust me? Even after all I’ve done for you?” He shook his head. “You have a funny way of showing it.”

Flint grabbed his wrist. _After all you’ve done for me?_ Flint echoed. _You’ve done nothing for me_. He crowded into John’s space. _You said yourself you’ve only been in this for you._

John exhaled, running his free hand through his curls. He shivered at the contact with Flint. “And you’re not?” he threw back. “You can’t tell me this endeavor was in any way for my benefit. If we’re both in this for selfish reasons, at least I’m honest about it.”

Flint stared down at him, his voice dripping with contempt. _You think you’re clever, that you could hide it from me, but you would take that treasure and not once looked back._

John prided himself on controlling his anger but Flint’s derision weaseled under his skin, stoked that fire. “I still could,” he informed Flint softly, careful to keep his voice steady. “How long do you think I’ve had that page? How long have I spent memorizing it? If I leave, rest assured I _will_ find your treasure.”

Flint’s eyes widened slightly, his nostrils flaring. Though he tried to hide the pain, he couldn’t completely. It still seeped through the cracks in his walls, cracks that John had put there. _Then do it._

John removed his wrist from Flint’s slackened grip and sat the lighter on the table, his anger leaving in a rush. He had Flint where he wanted him, had manipulated him into agreeing with his harebrained idea, but nothing about this felt like a victory. 

Pounding on the door drew his attention – Vane’s men had arrived – but he couldn’t look away from Flint nor, it seemed, could Flint look away from him.

“I’m not leaving,” John murmured.

Something shifted in Flint’s face, something subtle that John almost missed despite knowing to look for it. For all of their fighting, for all of the underhanded tricks John had to pull – and the ones he had to assume Flint pulled – to get them to this, Flint finally trusted him.

It wasn’t much but it was enough.

John reached for the page and the lighter and, at Flint nodding slightly, set the page on fire, the flickering flames casting strange patterns across Flint’s shadows.

Nothing but ashes remained – even Flint had vanished – when three of Vane’s thugs pushed their way into the kitchen, two of which John recognized from that night at the bar. He eyed them casually and settled on playing the fool. “Um…sorry, how did you get in here?”

“We let ourselves in, Johnny boy. See, we hear that you’ve been taking up with old Billy Bones.” The man brandished a knife. “Talking about the very thing you told us you’d never heard of.” He nodded at the others. “Now that seems like a load of crap, don’t it?”

John figured the distance in his head between him and the door. The odds were not in his favor. “Did it ever occur to you that perhaps I went to Billy because I just don’t like you?”

Another one grabbed him by the collar. “We’re gonna finish what we started and by the time we’re through, you won’t be mouthin’ off to us.”

The leader motioned the third one. “Search the house. If you find anything, let me know. We’ll take care of this one soon as we don’t need him.”

John fought to control the fear those words shot through him as the third one ambled off. “Unfortunately, what you’re looking for no longer exists.”

The men stared at him dumbly.

He nodded at the ashes. “I burned anything that might lead you to the treasure.”

The man clutching his collar pulled his fist back, aiming to beat the living shit out of him.

_I wouldn’t do that_ , Flint warned, the only warning he gave before wrapping his arms around the man’s neck and dragging him off of John.

To their credit, the two of them tried to stop Flint. They shot at him, they hit him, but nothing seemed to land – every bullet, every blow, passed through him. None of them lasted long against that.

John managed to land a couple of his own blows, knocking one of his assailants to the floor, the frenetic action keeping him focused on not dying – and not on the guns that could very much do just that.

Between him and Flint however, Vane’s men – even the third who had returned at the sound of fighting and gunfire – realized they were outgunned and fled the house in sheer terror.

John let his breath out and sank to the floor. He clutched his chest, at the pain that flared up just below the skin, but couldn’t help the grin stretching across his face. He looked up to see Flint leaning against the nearby wall, watching him, the same grin mirrored back.

Flint let out a laugh. “Again?”

John groaned and stretched out, pointedly not focusing on Flint’s real voice. “Do you want the long answer or the short one?” He buried his face in the crook of his elbow. “Because the short answer is ‘no.’ But then I suppose there’s fuck no. Fuck off. Fuck you. Fuck _me_.”

“You’ve made your point,” Flint interrupted but there was no bite to it. He sounded almost amused.

John moved his arm, staring up at the ceiling but not quite focusing on it. “Really? That wasn’t even half the list.”

Flint pushed away from the wall and reached down to help him up.

John took Flint’s hand, the cold pressure strange, and let Flint haul him to his feet. He gasped as his ribs shifted – the events of the evening had not been kind to them. 

“Do you have a plan from here?”

John yawned. “I do but I think it should wait. Right now, my plan extends to sleeping and no further.”

Flint’s smile, though teasing, reached his eyes. “Until the morning then.”

“You might want to rephrase that,” John informed him, pointing out the window at the sunrise. “It’s already morning.”

If Flint joined him in his room as he read – Sherlock Holmes stories this time since Flint hadn’t understood the reference in their earlier conversation – neither commented on it but John relished the sense of peace the moment gave them.

Before John completely fell asleep, he heard Flint whisper, “Thank you.” The raw emotion in those words couldn’t just be for him staying when he could have left.

He couldn’t trust his voice so he just nodded, his eyes following Flint as he left the room. He was in so very deep now but he felt like he’d won a gold medal. 

“You’re welcome,” he replied to the empty room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like I'm finally getting somewhere with this. I am still so blown away by the response I've gotten to this. Y'all are beyond fantastic!


	7. Chapter 7

John’s phone blared, stirring him out of a deep sleep.

He groaned and blearily checked the caller ID. “Oh, shit,” he muttered as he fumbled with the touch screen. “Hey, Max,” he answered, well aware of how thick with sleep his voice was. He tried to recall why he needed to call her but his half-asleep brain provided no answers.

Max barely let him get the first words out before she said in a rush, completely overpowering him, “John, oh thank God. Are you all right? What happened?”

It took him a moment to connect her words and the worry behind them to the events of the night. He swore under his breath. Christ, how the fuck could he even begin to explain what had happened?

“I’m fine. They didn’t hurt me.” When in doubt, his professor had said, rely on the truth as much as possible. Lies were harder to spot when they molded against the truth. “I knew what they were after so I took precautions and, despite them wanting my head, I convinced them it would be better to let me be.” 

The other end stayed silent for a long time before Max sighed. “I know you’re all right because you’re lying. You spin your spells of half-truths but you leave out or change as much, if not more, than you leave in. And I wish you’d stop. I wish you’d trust me.”

Her words stung though John should have expected them. If he’d been a bit more awake, he might have – Max always could spot him lying a mile off. Usually, she wasn’t as blunt calling him on it. Before he could defend himself, the line clicked dead. He stared at the phone like it offended him and slammed it on the nightstand.

Of all the things he could afford to do – and that list was quite short to begin with – alienating Max was not one of them.

He groaned and sat up, his stomach growling loudly. Despite only having slept a few hours, he wasn’t going back to sleep, not until he’d eaten. He trudged down the stairs, into the kitchen, in the search of food, the bullet holes catching his eye. Another result from the night’s events that he couldn’t easily hide or explain away. He traced each hole, the sheetrock crumbling under the touch.

He collapsed into a chair and leaned over the table, his head hitting the wood with a thump. For the day being still so young, he desperately needed a drink. If someone had asked him a couple of months ago where he saw himself now, his answer would have been as far from reality as humanly possible. 

His life in England had taken on a dreamlike quality – or a nightmarish one depending on which memories he chose – in this world of ghosts and treasure and guns, nothing from that world seemed real.

And Flint. God, he couldn’t even think about Flint. Convincing Flint to go along with his plan had been necessary but John had never thought they could work together so fluidly. Two cogs in the same machine.

He reveled in it and it terrified him. 

And yet he wondered if, somehow, Flint felt the same.

He shook the thought away. Nothing good ever came from getting…involved. He had learned that the hard way but God, the lesson hadn’t stuck. His heart had a treacherous mind of its own.

Much as he needed to talk about this to someone – anyone – who could he go to? He had no friends on the island – no friends at all – aside from Max but he’d have to tell her about _before_ for what was happening _now_ to make any sense.

The very thought set his stomach rolling.

He had never felt so alone.

Whether Eleanor needed him to work tonight or not, he would be at the tavern. Preferably for as long as he possibly could, with as much alcohol as he could afford.

Vane’s men gave John a wide berth when he arrived. Some of them shot fearful glances his way, others glared. But none approached him.

Eleanor slid beside him at the bar and nodded at them. “I don’t know what the fuck you did but you have them terrified. I’ve never seen their tails set so firmly between their legs.”

John glanced over.

Any that had been looking at him quickly looked away.

Some small part of him enjoyed watching them squirm. He shrugged. “I can barely hold my own against one person in a fight.” He turned back to Eleanor. “What could I possibly do to them?” 

She eyed him curiously. “Whatever lie you want to tell is your business.” She nodded at Mr. Scott, who was keeping an eye on the bar’s proceedings. “So long as it doesn’t fuck up mine.”

John downed a shot of whiskey as she walked away. “Wouldn’t dream of it,” he muttered to the empty space she vacated.

For the first few shots, he felt the smooth burn of the alcohol against his throat, felt the warmth spread to the tips of his fingers and toes. 

He could keep going – he wanted to keep going, wanted to stop feeling. He wanted to stop the ache in his chest every time he remembered what drove him here. He wanted to stop feeling anything for Flint past what he needed to maintain their working relationship. He wanted to stop caring about Vane and the treasure and any other demand on his life or his sanity. 

But he couldn’t.

He waved Eleanor off when she walked by with a bottle of Jack Daniels. He could rationalize fucking himself over – and getting smashed in full view of Vane’s men would certainly accomplish that – but he couldn’t hurt Max, not after this morning, and he couldn’t betray Flint. He heard Max’s voice so full of worry, saw Flint’s half crazed grin after they’d chased off Vane’s goons together, and he forced back bile at the thought of taking another shot.

Fuck it all.

He was nursing a glass of water to stave off any after effects of the alcohol when a thin excuse of a man slid into the seat beside him at the bar. 

“You made quite the impression on the crew last night,” the man said with no introduction whatsoever.

John took another sip of water. One of Vane’s men then. “Is that so?”

“Three of them, armed, went to your house to retrieve the map to Flint’s treasure,” the man continued as if John hadn’t spoken. “All three returned empty handed. Now that says something of the man they were meant to intimidate.”

John arched an eyebrow and waited for him to continue.

“They say that you summoned a ghost to fight them off,” the man added. “Now, I realize they’re superstitious and would say almost anything to avoid our captain’s wrath. But there must be some kernel of truth to it.” He leaned over and lowered his voice. “So what happened last night?”

John smiled into his glass. “A friend of mine stepped and kept them from killing me. I can assure you he is no ghost.”

The man searched the bar. “I fail to see anyone with you today.”

John finally turned to face him. “He isn’t what you would call a people person,” he muttered. He couldn’t imagine Flint frequenting a tavern even when the option was open to him. “And why would you care whether I enjoyed a drink alone, if you’re on Vane’s crew? Is my safety that important to you?”

The man replied, “Because my partner has been sleeping with your friend for the past few months. And your safety is important to them. As, I am certain, theirs is to you.”

If he was hoping to get John’s attention, he had it, but John couldn’t afford to show that. “Has Vane been so thoroughly shaken that he’s sent you to threaten me and mine in his stead?” He downed another gulp of water. “I can’t say I’m impressed.”

The other man held up his hands. “Of course, of course. I understand the confusion. This isn’t intended to be a threat, I assure you. In fact, I must admit the captain doesn’t know we’re having this conversation. But, you see, the men do rely on me to temper him. Discussing last night’s situation with you seemed the best course of action to achieve that goal.”

John arched an eyebrow. “You do realize that the only map to Flint’s treasure is a pile of ash on my kitchen floor. Every scrap of information on it is in my head so if Vane wants any portion of said treasure, he needs me. And I think he will find me less than cooperative should he so much as touch a hair on Max’s head.”

“Fair enough,” his companion conceded. “The men failed to mention that to either of us.” He considered John carefully. “You’ve thought this through, Mr. Silver, I will give you that.”

John smiled thinly. “I might not have the upper hand in a fight but I can reason my way out of one.”

The other man nodded. “I heartily approve. If more of us used our brains in ventures such as these, we might all be more successful.” He pushed away from the bar. “My apologies for disturbing your evening.”

John grabbed him as he passed. “I believe I failed to catch your name.”

“Jack Rackham. And it is a pleasure to meet you.” Rackham disengaged his arm from John’s hand and rejoined the rest of his crew on the other side of the tavern.

John eyed them for a moment before figuring he had well worn out his welcome for the evening. The men had been cowed for now, but the longer he remained, without Flint at his back, the more he invited disaster.

He hailed a cab and rested against the window on the drive home. Though the ride was long, he enjoyed the time to process the day and to clear his head, both from the alcohol still coursing through his veins and the thoughts hounding him.

The gaping, bleeding wounds from before that had left him open and raw had tentatively scabbed over even though Flint had, unknowingly, tried to burrow underneath. 

He sighed. For all Max had insisted the island would grow on him, hook him, and keep him here, he had refused to believe her. Yet here he was, as invested as he could be. Nothing could drag him back to England. Not now. 

He paid the cab driver and walked up his driveway. A strange car was parked close to the house and lights glowed from the kitchen windows.

Cautiously, he approached the front door and opened it. He had no weapon to speak of so his best hope would be for Flint to come to his aid again – and his immediate leap to reliance upon Flint worried him. He crept through the kitchen and relaxed slightly at the sight of Billy at the table. Unless Vane was holding him at gunpoint and he couldn’t yet see it, he was safe.

Flint appeared in the doorway just out of view.

John nodded at their guest. “I assume you let him in?” he murmured, careful to keep his voice down. He motioned at Flint. “He doesn’t know?”

The corners of Flint’s eyes crinkled. “He failed to mention it.”

Interesting.

“He wanted to speak with you but you’d gone to town.” Flint sniffed and recoiled. “Apparently to drink.”

John glared at him, angry at the insinuation that hit too close to the mark. “I’m not drunk, if that’s what you’re worried about.” He glanced back at Billy. “I did, however, make one _very_ interesting acquaintance that I believe our friend might also be interested in.”

“Friends,” Flint corrected him.

“Beg pardon?”

Flint nodded toward where Billy was sitting. “There are two of them.”

John squared his shoulders. Billy, he could handle, even though he could swear the man believed none of the shit he spewed. Dufresne always looked like he had swallowed a lemon when he saw John. 

At least the feeling was mutual.

“Do you have a plan?” he whispered. “Any particular way you want to play this?”

Flint only offered an arrogant half smile that set John’s heart racing. “You brought them into this. The plan is yours.”

Fuck his smugness. If the option had been open to him, John would have strangled him then and there. “Whatever you do, don’t tell them your name. I doubt either would react well to meeting the man whose treasure we’re seeking.”

“I hadn’t intended to,” came the dry assurance.

John bit back the retort that sprang to his lips. “Well, if you’ve thought of everything, shall we?”

Flint waved him ahead. “After you.”

“Evening, gentlemen,” he said as they walked into the room, smile plastered on his face. “I must say this is unexpected. To what do we owe the pleasure?” He slid into one of the remaining empty chairs, Flint taking the chair beside him. 

Dufresne replied, “We need to plan to retrieve the treasure, especially now that Vane has moved against us.” He glared at John like he had personally wronged him.

“Moved against me,” he corrected none too gently, his smile not faltering. “As far as I know, he didn’t send men to your homes last night to kill you.” Flint’s gaze stayed on him, as if the other two men didn’t exist. He nodded at Flint, meeting that gaze briefly. “Thankfully, I wasn’t alone.”

Dufresne scoffed. “Of course you’d be useless in a fight.”

Oh, how different an opinion from Rackham’s. At least with him, John felt his intelligence was appreciated. Hell, he had even forced Flint – and, in some small way, Vane – to account for it. “Useless, yes,” he admitted easily. “And yet I managed to prevent the sole piece of information Vane needed to undermine this venture from falling into his hands, which – thanks to my conversation with Mr. Rackham tonight – he is now painfully aware of.” He dropped the smile. “Most would consider that a success.”

Billy regarded him. “Where is that information now?”

“The one place I could keep it safe.” John pointed at his head. 

Dufresne swore under his breath.

The shit-eating smile John gave him was completely genuine. This was a man he could afford to piss off every once in a while and he was going to take the opportunity when it presented itself. 

“Like it or not, that’s where it is and that’s where it stays.”

John tried not to spin comically and stare at Flint. Though he greatly appreciated the support, he hadn’t expected it in the slightest.

Billy didn’t share his companion’s ire. If he saw John’s possession of that information as a roadblock, he kept it to himself. “Then let’s get started.”

Night faded to dawn but they finally walked away with a plan all could agree on.

John watched as their car vanished down the main road before returning to the kitchen and pouring himself a shot of whiskey. He deserved it for not killing Dufresne. “Well, that went well,” he muttered, sensing Flint standing behind him.

“Dufresne will be a problem,” Flint told him.

He downed the shot, grimacing at the burn of it. “He’s already a problem but we need him, at least for the time being.” Though the thought of chasing the shot with the rest of the bottle was tempting, he put it away. Flint had him on uneven footing sober – dealing with him drunk would be a nightmare. “If you have any suggestions, I’m open to hear them.”

Flint’s expression remained the same, nothing shifted at all, but John inhaled the annoyance that sparked off him.

At least, he thought it was annoyance.

“Neither of them asked for your name,” he continued, knowing full well Flint would give him no answer. “I assume you already gave them one prior to my arrival, which made my warning rather pointless.” The spike of annoyance he expected to accompany the revelation didn’t come despite the pointed glare he leveled at Flint.

Though something mischievous twinkled in Flint’s eyes, his voice was solemn, and almost bitter, when he asked, “If I had used Captain Flint, how do you think they would have reacted?”

“You mean aside from them laughing us out of the room?” John asked incredulously. 

When he was met only with silence, John gaped at Flint, his mind no more capable of comprehending what Flint was, albeit implicitly, asking him than if Flint had gotten down on one knee and declared passionate love for him. “Wait, sorry, you’re actually asking my opinion?”

Flint didn’t bother replying, his gaze a steady mix of both patience and impatience. He was willing to let John take the time to parse him out but didn’t want to wait on him either. It was something that, had John not seen it with his own eyes, he would have thought an impossible expression. 

From anyone other than Flint, John might have called the look endearing.

“It’s just that you’ve made it quite clear many times how poorly you view my intelligence.” 

Flint leaned against the table. “You realize you’re not helping your case.”

John pushed away from the counter and joined Flint at the table, choosing to sit if only to ease the pressure on his ribs, which still twinged uncomfortably if he moved certain ways. “Then, I must admit, I doubt they would take it well. And I’m not just talking about the fact that you’re not exactly living or breathing. That they could overlook but the stories I’ve heard about you – whoo – they are rough to say the least.” He frowned, tried his best to catch Flint’s gaze. 

Flint stared off into space, his hands digging dangerously into the wood of the table. “They would see me as the villain?”

John was treading on thin ice. One wrong word would topple the entire conversation. Or something else far more fragile. “I believe that might be a reasonable assumption, yes,” he agreed, drawing the words out. For Flint to even ask that…it was one thing to truly care what others thought but – 

“My God,” he murmured, realization sinking in. “It actually bothers you, doesn’t it? After all this time, what they thought – that they saw you that way. That they still see you that way.” 

He shook his head and finally caught Flint’s gaze. The emotions in those eyes, normally so closed off despite the changes in the air that accompanied them, were nothing he’d ever seen – one on top of the other until they drowned. “You believe it too, don’t you?” he asked. “With the things you’ve done…Christ.”

Flint’s eyes widened imperceptibly, every muscle stretched taut. “And you? What do you think?”

John opened his mouth to offer assurances but the words that spilled out weren’t the ones his brain thought at all. “If you had asked me last week, maybe even yesterday, I would have said you are the means of getting me a share of your treasure, just as I’m yours, and aside from that, I couldn’t care what labels the rest of the world affixes to you.” 

“What about now?”

He paused, collecting his thoughts. Standing at the edge of the precipice, he had either the option to back away or to fall.

He fell.

“Now?” he echoed. “I think you could have used me as a means to an end but you haven’t.”

Flint’s eyes narrowed, brow furrowed in confusion.

“I think you saved my life last night. Hell, I think you enjoy listening to me read. I think – “ He rose from the chair and leaned against the table at Flint’s side, almost close enough to touch. “I think that a man who does that…I wouldn’t call him a villain.”

Flint bowed his head, far more vulnerable than John had ever seen him. “What would you call him?”

John looked over at him to gauge his reaction. “A friend.”

The silence that greeted his words wasn’t Flint choosing not to reply. He couldn’t reply. 

For once, John had left Flint utterly speechless.

Realizing the conversation had reached some kind of end – though what end that was, he couldn’t say – John walked to the base of the stairs. He gripped the banister and didn’t quite turn around to ask the one question he felt he still could. “Out of curiosity, what name did you give them?”

“James McGraw.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this is late coming out. Life was rather hectic these past couple of weeks and this chapter kicked my ass. That being said, I hope you enjoy it :)


	8. Chapter 8

The next days passed in a flurry of activity. Billy and Dufresne came by almost daily to discuss supply runs and monetary problems. Dufresne brought up the valid issue of personnel problems. They needed more people than the three of them. Billy brought on a man named DeGroot, Dufresne brought in Muldoon. 

John wove his spell over them as well. Those meetings, Flint watched from the sidelines, letting John thrive in his element of getting men to follow him. John would glance back at him, usually when Dufresne was rambling inanely about something, and smile. Strange as it was, he took comfort from having Flint at his back.

They spent hours upon hours pouring over maps spread out on the table, searching for paths to take that would avoid shipping lanes and remain out of sight from the populated areas. Not only did they have to avoid anyone British, but they had to avoid Vane’s crew as well.

Dufresne complained vehemently about not having access to Google. 

Billy and John shut him down. One, it was easier to plan routes when you could doodle on the maps. Two, it was impossible for anyone to spy on you if you weren’t using the equipment they could hack. And John simply hadn’t cared enough to install the internet though he refrained from passing that along.

The conversation he’d had with Flint after that trying to explain the internet was a laughable affair.

Flint’s expertise during their preparations was invaluable. His knowledge of maps and of the region proved immeasurably helpful on many occasions. Neither Billy nor Dufresne noticed – not that they even bothered looking – how Flint stared at those maps longingly even after they’d finished for the day. John wanted to determine the reason behind it – he needed to, if only to stem the tide of emotions from Flint – but he had his own issue to take care of first, something that had built up in the past few days that threatened to explode in his face and undermine everything he was working for.

He and Max had not spoken since the morning after Vane’s attack. He tried calling the first few days, to explain, to apologize, but she never answered. The implicit refusal ached. His chest constricted at the thought of losing her friendship. If he lost her, he would have nothing. His last ties to his life from before, his anchor, would be gone.

That wasn’t something he was willing to accept passively. He wouldn’t survive it – he would drown.

John stopped by Max’s apartment one afternoon before he bought groceries, waiting for her friend from Vane’s crew to leave. The woman openly carried two daggers on her hips – she was not someone he wanted to cross, in a dark alley or not. He took a deep breath after he climbed the stairs and knocked twice.

Max stared at him as she opened the door but didn’t move to let him in, her expression a mix of hurt and anger. “What are you doing here?”

“You weren’t returning my calls,” he explained simply. “I wanted to apologize.”

“For what?” she asked, her voice curt.

“For everything.” He looked over her shoulder though he was fairly certain she was now alone. “May I come in?”

Max stepped back but said nothing.

John walked into the living room, saw the couch he’d crashed on when he first arrived, and no longer felt comfortable sitting on it. He stood awkwardly in the middle of the room.

Max sat in her lounge chair. “Well, let’s hear it.”

“I have been lying to you. About quite a lot.” Her scathing gaze burned holes in him. “I want to tell you the truth, if you’ll hear it.” Without waiting for her approval, he dove into his story. If he didn’t start now, what courage he had would vanish. 

He told her about the treasure, about how he came to work with Billy, how he encountered Vane and how he crossed him. As he spoke, the atmosphere in the room warmed and he sat on the sofa.

Max leaned back when he’d finished, her expression softening. “That is a tale, _mon cher_ , and one I wish you would have told me sooner.” She folded her hands in her lap. “Anne told me Vane was after you but she did not know why. He threatened you. He beat you. His men came after you with guns. I was worried about you!” Her voice, normally so composed, shook. “Why did you not tell me? Do you not trust me?”

“I trust you, Max. You know that.” He admitted, “But I knew you were involved with someone on Vane’s crew and I was afraid telling you would get you hurt.” He chuckled. “And I was afraid you’d think I was crazy.” Though living with a ghost – one that he was growing far too close to – definitely counted as crazy. 

Not that she knew that.

Just another secret, he mused.

She smiled. “You are crazy. I knew that when you called me asking to stay with me. But I understand.” She walked over to him and sat beside him. “Thank you for confiding in me.”

John picked at the hem of his shirt. 

“There is something else, isn’t there?”

He couldn’t look at her. “If I told you I’ve made a mistake, what would you tell me?” 

She gripped his shoulder, rubbed circles into the tense muscles. “That depends on the mistake, _cher_. You made a mistake not telling me what you’ve gotten yourself into but you’re on your way to repairing that. What other mistake have you made?”

He wanted to tell her but the words weren’t there. There were no words in the English language, or in Spanish or French, to adequately explain how he’d ended up here, how he had ended up in Nassau with her as his only lifeline or how he had ended up with Flint. Of everything he had admitted to her, he still could not tell her this. “The same one that got me here.”

She tucked an errant curl behind his ear. “Whatever it is, I cannot regret it and neither should you. It brought you exactly where you needed to be. This treasure will surely be enough to erase whatever guilt you still feel over it, hmm?” Her face lit up with a smile. “If you are worried that perhaps you are making the same mistake, you should consider the first as the means to get you to the second. Perhaps what you see now as a mistake, it is no mistake at all.”

He opened his mouth to dismiss her, to spill everything to her –

“But you are not ready to tell me,” she pointed out gently, pressing a finger to his lips. “It eats at you – I can see it – but if you tell me before you’re ready, it will only be another mistake. I told you before I will be here for you.” She shifted on the sofa until she faced him and turned his face towards her, her hand pressed against his cheek.

He leaned into the touch. “I owe you one.”

“Yes, you do,” she agreed. “And know that if you ever lie to me again when it affects not just your safety, but mine, I will end you. You will only wish Vane and his men had gotten you.”

Max could bring the wrath of heaven down upon any who crossed her so John very much believed her. “Yes, ma’am.”

She hugged him before he left – he clung to her, holding on a bit longer than he should have, but he relished the first decent human contact he had had in what seemed like months.

And he wondered in that moment how Flint had managed three hundred years without it.

“Take care of yourself. _Bonne chance_.”

“I always try to,” he assured her. “And thank you.” He waved over his shoulder as he took the stairs down two at a time. 

Having Max back in his corner lifted his spirits and her words calmed the raging storms in his head. He smiled up at the sun through his sunglasses and meandered to the grocery store, seeing no need to waste the beautiful day.

He found Flint still staring at the maps covering the dining room table when he arrived with two armfuls of groceries, Flint not registering his arrival at all. He quietly put everything away in the cabinets and the refrigerator and returned to the archway to talk to Flint.

Loathe to interrupt, John stood there, watching him, taking the time to really see him. He bent over the table, his coat spilling onto the wood, his shorn brilliantly auburn hair catching the sun as he worked. His emotions were still an open book for John to read – how Billy or Dufresne couldn’t feel them any time they stood near him, John had no idea – but John could now rely on them less to judge how Flint would react. He could intuit what Flint was thinking by shifts in his stance, the wrinkles around his eyes, the curve of his mouth.

At the moment, Flint traced along the trading lanes, the edges of islands he must have remembered, his brow furrowed in concentration.

It was all too easy for John to imagine him in the captain’s cabin on a ship, examining the same maps to determine the best hunting spots. Yet here he was, trapped in a house as far from the sea as was possible on the island. Flint could barely contain his need to talk about it. Static bounced across his skin and the shadows returned, blurring his edges.

“You miss it, don’t you?” John asked, partly out of curiosity and partly to give him some out, some relief. 

“Sorry?” Flint’s edges sharpened, coming into focus, as he glanced up.

John nodded at the maps. “You miss this. All of it.” He followed Flint’s gaze and found New Providence Island. “The water, the people, the thrill of the chase.” He walked around the table, studying what Flint had been looking at. “I can’t imagine a house can offer the same challenge or the same freedom.” 

He couldn’t quite decipher the look Flint gave him. “If you already know my answer, why did you ask?”

There was that cat-and-mouse element of their relationship that John enjoyed so much and perhaps enjoyed all the more now that he was certain Flint would not move against him. “When talking to you, admitting I know an answer fails to move the conversation forward.”

“You think if you frame it as a question, an unknown, I’ll tell you what you want to know?” Flint asked, his voice harsh, some of the thunder returning behind it.

John held his hands up, taking a step back, aware of the tension coiling around them. “Would that be so horrible?” he pressed. “You refuse to open up any other way.”

Flint pushed away from the table and was inches from John before he could blink. “Stop.”

The house groaned under the force of the word.

“Now you have wormed your way into the heads of the men we’re working with. And they have granted you authority over them because of it. But in my head – you are not welcome.”

Had John known Flint less, had their balance of power tipped less in his favor, John might have backed down, might have let Flint go. But there was power in calling him friend, power that John refused to hand back. “If I wasn’t already in your head, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

Flint recoiled – retreated – as if John’s words physically hurt him.

“You’ve trusted me this far – have I used it against you?” He closed the space between them – space that Flint had put there. “Why is it so repulsive to you to let someone in – to trust them?”

He forced the emotions warring under Flint’s skin to their boiling point. “Or have you been lying to me this whole time?”

A knock on the door startled them apart, the tension rolling back to a simmer. Though neither looked at each other, both felt it straining and pulling between them.

They dealt with Billy’s question, something about securing another boat, and sent him on his way. Billy had glanced from John to Flint and back and kept his mouth shut about his very sudden dismissal.

Flint seemed no more inclined to discuss anything with John after the interruption than before.

John shook his head. How the fuck had he thought they could be friends? If Flint didn’t trust him still…“Fuck this,” he muttered, storming off. He focused all of his attention on rolling the maps up and storing them in the utility closet though the edges of his vision were tinged with red. Though he felt Flint appear behind him, he refused to acknowledge him.

Flint finally broke the silence before it stretched too far, too thin. “Why does it matter if I miss that life?”

John took a deep breath, closing the closet door. “It doesn’t, actually. Matter, that is.” He turned and leaned against the doorframe.

Flint frowned as he tried to parse out John’s meaning.

“Not to our hunt, anyway,” John clarified. “But it matters to you and you cannot pretend otherwise, no matter how vehemently you refuse to answer a simple question.”

“With you, there are no simple questions,” Flint countered.

John stilled, met Flint’s gaze and held it. “Maybe this one is.”

“And how would you respond to the same question?” Flint demanded. “You can’t tell me there are things you don’t miss from your life before.”

John blinked once – twice – startled, his anger bleeding away. He was used to Flint throwing him off balance but this hit too close to the wounds he had almost revealed to Max earlier. He hadn’t thought he had revealed anywhere near as much to Flint. That he had without realizing it terrified him. “Who says I miss anything?”

Flint dragged a chair out and sat down, a ghost of a smile on his face. “You just did.”

John answered with his own smile. He couldn’t deny it – Flint had played him and had deflected the question skillfully – but he could steer the conversation back. He arched his brow. “And it matters to you?”

“No more than it matters to you.”

John sat opposite Flint at the table and tried another tactic, Max’s words echoing in his mind. Maybe what she’d said about mistakes was truer than he’d thought. Maybe this – whatever this was – wasn’t a mistake. He laid every card he’d kept close to his chest on the table. “Have you considered that it _does_ matter to me?” 

Flint’s eyes widened.

John dropped his smile. “I suppose it is unusual – you did hold a knife to my throat when we met and I stole one of your most valued possessions. But we have coexisted under the same roof for weeks and I had very much thought we had moved past that.”

Flint schooled his expression into something resembling neutrality but he couldn’t stem the emotions dancing around him – the shock and something far softer. “You can’t mean it.”

“Captain, if there is one thing you may know for certain, it is that I will not lie to you. I mean it.” John regarded him. There was an air of openness between them and a question that had weighed on him needed asking. “May I ask you something?”

Flint blinked once, slowly, as if he were suddenly very tired.

“The name you gave Billy and Dufresne…” John couldn’t quite frame it as a question so he let his voice drop off.

It had stayed with him since Flint had uttered it, as if John had dragged the words from him. 

Every line of Flint hardened, from his shoulders to his breath, every muscle stretched, ready to run. “What about it?”

John shrugged, though choosing his next words carefully. “The best way to lie is to make it as truthful as possible. Which leads me to believe “James McGraw” was once your name.” He held his breath, expecting dismissal or anger.

He did not expect an answer.

“It was,” came the quiet response. “Before I arrived in Nassau.” Flint’s voice was tight. The air around him squeezed in, as if the deep breath before a storm.

John took a moment to process what Flint had given him. “I guess McGraw doesn’t carry quite the same gravitas as Flint for a pirate captain.” Intrigued, he pressed, “Where did you get the inspiration for it?”

Some of the tension eased out of Flint’s shoulders, the house heaving out a sigh of relief.

John noted the change with no small amount of curiosity. Had Flint expected him to ask something else? What had happened around Flint changing his name that he was so loathe to talk about? The only other instant Flint had shut down any communication was when Miranda Barlow was mentioned – there had to be a connection. He danced around that for now, not wanting to disturb the fragile peace between them. The man could have his secrets – God knew, John had them.

“I was raised by my grandfather, a fisherman in Padstow. There was a story he told me of a night he was on the late watch on a privateer in Boston Harbor and of a man who appeared out of the sea – said he’d been accused of killing another man. Yet all he asked for was a drink of rum.”

“His name was Flint,” John muttered, half to himself. 

Flint nodded. “Mr. Flint. That was the only name he gave.”

“What happened to him – that Flint?”

Flint turned to stare out the window at the sun starting to set, casting pink and orange hues against the gathering clouds. There’d be a storm tonight. “He disappeared. My grandfather never heard about a killing or a fugitive at large.” Flint’s eyes fell closed and he sighed. “It was as if the sea had conjured him and taken him back for some unknowable purpose.”

“When you appeared in Nassau, I can how the name held appeal.” He looked across at Flint but Flint kept his gaze resolutely anywhere but on him. 

_Oh._

“You wanted to disappear, just as he had, didn’t you? You never intended to be Flint forever. And yet, that is how history remembers you.” As the villain, John thought to himself.

Finally, Flint’s gaze returned to him and John would have staggered under the weight of what he saw in those eyes had he not already been sitting.

As if in a trance, John rose and walked around the table until he was standing next to, above, Flint.

Flint glanced up.

John laid his hand on Flint’s shoulder, felt Flint tense beneath him. He had no answer to the question in Flint’s eyes, had no answer to the slump in Flint’s shoulders – not for Flint, not for himself. Instead of drowning in the onslaught of emotions boiling just under Flint’s skin that sparked across where his hand touched him, he walked away.

As he wandered about his room getting ready for work, he spotted a book in one of his piles and he had to chuckle – if ever there was a time for it… He handed it to Flint when he returned to the kitchen. “I have work in an hour but I saw this upstairs – thought you might enjoy it. It’s worth a read even if it is a bit lighthearted.”

Flint took it from him, their hands touching briefly. “Thank you, John,” he said as John walked to the front door.

John’s hand hovered over the doorknob, his brain no longer communicating with his body. He couldn’t help the smile spreading across his face. “You’re welcome...James.” He got into the cab as the rain started falling and a crack of lightning split the sky.

* * *

He never arrived at the tavern.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, so we're coming to the serious plot stuff after this and I figured I could get one last meaty conversation between Silver and Flint before everything goes bad. Because that always works. Right?
> 
> As always, the response just keeps blowing me away. I love you all so, so much <3


	9. Chapter 9

John inhaled the salty, humid air of Nassau as Max weaved in and out of traffic on the busy streets. Though Miami did not differ much in that regard, he had spent most of his time there cooped up in the hospital and the physical therapy center, neither of which he ever wanted to see again. Nassau was his home now and he relished coming back to it. 

Of course, it had nothing to do with the hour-long flight it took to get him here.

He closed his eyes, focusing on the play of sunlight and shadows against his eyelids, the memory of the blaring fluorescent lights and the sterile smell that all hospital rooms had too fresh in his mind. Even now, with the mix of city and ocean wafting into his nose, he could still smell that damn hospital.

Two months he’d spent there, trapped – caged like a fucking animal. 

Two months he had dealt with Max’s pitying glances, with his crew visiting him regularly and assuring him they would take care of him. He had finally snapped, telling Muldoon there was nothing more terrifying than that sentiment.

His house was exactly as he’d left it and he breathed easier to see it. One of his first thoughts upon regaining some manner of consciousness was a sickening dread that Vane’s men had taken what was left of their bitterness and frustration out on his house, which frightened him so profoundly he asked Billy to check on it daily until he could return. Gazing at it through the car window, he felt the hole in his heart fill in, the weeks that had bled into months since last he had seen it fading away.

Max tried to help him out of the car, tried to help him up the stairs but he barked at her, perhaps harsher than he meant to, that he didn’t need help. And he managed to limp up the stairs without assistance, proving to her that he could get around his house alone. The last thing he wanted was for anyone, especially her, to babysit him. He had been coddled for the past few months, treated like some fragile thing that would shatter for anything, and it grated on his nerves.

He was very thankful for Max though. Somehow, she had scrounged up the funds to pay for everything. His surgery, his therapy, his prosthesis. Though he was curious what sort of reserves she had to fork out that amount of money, something told him he was better off not knowing. 

Still, he owed her more than he could ever say.

He pushed open the front door, almost caressing the wood, and walked inside. He gaped at the sight that greeted him. “What the fuck happened here?”

Max appeared at his side. “I thought it would be a nice touch for Billy and the rest of your crew to finish the house since you had them here anyway. As a surprise.”

For the first time in what felt like ages, John smiled. Everything was finished – the floors, the walls, even the bullet holes had been filled in and painted over – and the rooms were filled with furniture, bookcases loaded with books lining the walls. He was home, almost even at peace – a miracle considering what had taken him away.

He wrapped an arm around Max’s shoulders. “Thank you,” he whispered.

She smiled up at him. “Anything for you, _mon cher_.”

Her phone rang. A quick glance at the caller id read Billy Bones. She waved him off. “I will take care of it. Go, sit down.”

He walked into the kitchen, leaning on the table for support, still adjusting to the change in his gait. Thankfully, he had received his prosthesis before leaving Miami and no longer had to rely on crutches. His arms still ached from hobbling around on those monstrosities. 

He sank onto a chair, hissing in pain at the change in pressure. The book he had given Flint still lay on the table. He picked it up, their last conversation replaying in his mind. Two months and the tumult Flint caused still had not resolved itself.

What must Flint have thought when he hadn’t come home? 

He dreaded that confrontation but Max served, somewhat unknowingly, as a buffer, at least until she left.

She joined him, her hand covering her phone’s speaker. “Billy would like to meet with you. Are you up for it?” 

He stared out the window, only half hearing her – lost in thought as he was.

“I can tell him you need time to adjust –“

“I’m fine, Max,” he assured her. “If it’s urgent, I’d be happy to talk to him.” 

She nodded and walked back into the foyer, speaking softly into her phone.

Billy arrived a short time later, Muldoon and DeGroot accompanying him. “We need to talk about Dufresne,” Billy informed John as he joined him and Max at the table.

John had noted with some wariness that he hadn’t seen or heard from Dufresne since before _that_. Everyone he knew on the island – with the understandable exception of Flint – had visited him in the hospital. Max had not once left his side. Billy and the others visited when they could, checking over FaceTime when they couldn’t. Even Eleanor and Mr. Scott stayed one afternoon despite the palpable tension between Max and Eleanor.

But not Dufresne. 

“What about him?” John asked, though he already knew the answer.

“He’s defected,” came Billy’s resigned reply.

John leaned back in the chair. “To Vane?”

Muldoon shook his head, taking the chair opposite Billy. “To the British.”

“The British?” John echoed. “Why on earth would he join them?”

Billy shrugged. “He never did care for you much and with you in the hospital…maybe he felt like they were his best chance of actually getting the treasure.”

John watched Billy with interest, wariness. “And what of you?” he asked. “Do you feel the same?”

Muldoon swore. “No fucking way. You and that McGraw fellow know more about that treasure than them Brits could ever hope to. We ain’t going over to them.”

Max had to hide her smile.

“Very well.” John had learned when to simply accept a gift and when to ask why it was given. This was not a time to question. “Then we should keep an eye out for Dufresne. He will continue to cause us trouble, of that I’ve no doubt.”

Billy nodded in agreement. John was under no illusions that Billy would treat the man kindly when he found him. If he found Dufresne’s bloodied corpse after such an encounter, he would not be surprised.

They turned to the topic of the treasure itself. It was still a priority but John doubted his capability to work on a boat until he’d gotten used to his injury. Thankfully, his crew understood that, though Billy was gnawing at the bit, desperate to enact some king of revenge on Vane’s men for what they’d done; Muldoon hot on his heels.

Despite everything, John had found he rather liked Muldoon and the sentiment was seemingly mutual. Faced with that level of support, he gave them permission. It gave them something to occupy their time while he healed and he knew they wouldn’t rest until some manner of justice was had.

Not that he thought there could be much justice for what had happened. 

A knock on the door startled them, Billy and John exchanging a glance. John wasn’t expecting company this late and his nerves, already frayed, itched at the possibility of danger.

He approached the door cautiously, his crew listening intently from the table, and opened it, peering through the narrow sliver.

Rackham and Max’s friend stood side by side, the woman tapping her foot as if she would rather be anywhere but here. 

He opened the door wider, determining there was no immediate threat.

Rackham looked him over. “You look like shit.”

John huffed. “Your men tortured me, beat me, mutilated my leg, which the doctors then had to amputate. I was in shock by the time someone found me and I almost died twice on the flight to the hospital.” He smirked, crossing his arms. “I would say I’m entitled. Wouldn’t you?”

Neither of his visitors seemed inclined to disagree.

“That is precisely what we came to discuss with you,” Rackham informed him, stepping into the foyer. “As you might have guessed, Mr. Hamund, in taking preemptive action against you, acted without Captain Vane’s permission.”

“He mentioned as much,” John confirmed, curious where Rackham was heading. “Why is that important?”

Rackham glanced around to see who might overhear him. “Because Charles intends to offer recompense. Deliver justice, if you will.”

John’s lips curled up in a sneer. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t trust that offer.”

“Of course, of course. I doubted you would and I cannot blame you in the slightest,” Rackham placated. “But I can provide evidence, should you require it, that Charles means well.”

John waited expectantly. “And that is…?”

“He paid your hospital bills,” was the simple explanation. “Your friend Max approached him and convinced him to cover what costs she could not. I must say, Americans are proud of their medicine – it was a hefty sum.”

John gaped at him, his mind struggling to process that information. “Charles Vane, the man who – on multiple occasions – tried to kill me, saved my life?” He kept his focus on Rackham though his mind wandered to where Max was sitting only a couple of rooms over.

Rackham smiled. “He was made aware of certain… _ramifications_ should he not help,” he clarified, both bitter and impressed.

Everything clicked into place. John did not want to know what kind of hell Max threatened to rain down on Vane but he almost wished he had been there to see it happen. “Is this a courtesy call then, for Billy to stand down?”

Rackham’s companion snorted. “Fat lot of good he’ll be. Job’s already done.”

John regarded her thoughtfully, his hunch about her apparently quite correct. “I’m sorry, who are you exactly?”

She glared up at him from under the rim of her broad hat as her hands curled around her daggers.

Rackham restrained her. “Easy.” He looked back at John. “Anne Bonny,” he answered, tilting his head toward her. “Charles will want to be in touch. He has more information that might be rather valuable to you. Regarding the movements of certain British treasure hunters. And your missing man.”

Dufresne. 

The information could prove useful. For the moment, John considered it. “As long as he’ll agree to meet here, with only the two of you and my crew, I see no reason why we shouldn’t talk.” If Vane did intend to try something, having Billy, Muldoon, and DeGroot – and even Max – at his side might give him some advantage.

“Done.”

John latched the door behind them as they took the stairs two at a time and hobbled back to the table. He looked at each face seated there. “I assume you all heard of that.”

Everyone nodded or murmured a confirmation.

John leaned over, supporting some of his weight on his hands. “Then let’s assume my assailants have met a timely end.”

“If Anne was involved, you don’t have to assume,” Max told him.

He acknowledged her statement. They’d discuss her actions in detail at a later time. “Focus all your efforts then on running Dufresne to ground. If he’s on the island, we need to find him.”

The meeting essentially over, each person went their separate ways. 

Max tried to insist on staying the night but he assured her he could take care of himself. She kissed him on the cheek, throwing one last worried glance his way before getting into her car.

He clung to the windowsill, watching her drive away until her taillights vanished into the night. Climbing the stairs alone was a daunting task but he managed. He intended to explore each room to see the work his crew had put in but for now, there was only one he wanted to see.

Everything in his room was exactly as he’d left it, stacks of books still littering every flat space. He ran his fingers along the top of the dresser but there was no dust to leave a trail in. As if he’d never left…

“Are your men even aware of how skillfully you play them?”

Every muscle in John’s body ceased its movement. He wasn’t ready to face Flint. Still reeling from what had happened to him, he couldn’t withstand such a force of nature. He had hoped for time, any amount of time, to plan for this moment but Flint, as he was so often wont to do, utterly demolished those plans. He blinked once, twice, struggling to process the accusation in that question. Gripping the bedpost so tightly his knuckles whitened, he turned. “Come again?”

Flint glared at him from the doorway. “Did you think to play me as well?”

John snorted. “On the contrary, I do believe you made it quite clear that I am not welcome in your head.” He limped to the bed, every step on his prosthetic agony. “If, by some miracle, I managed to find myself in there, it would be your doing.” He met Flint’s gaze. “Not mine.”

The physical wall that knocked him back was not entirely unexpected, Flint’s eyes blazing as brightly as they were, but he landed on his bad leg, a harsh cry escaping his lips at the stabbing pain racing up his spine. He glanced up and the mixture of horror and pity in Flint’s eyes disgusted him. “Where the fuck did you think I was?” he demanded. “On vacation?”

Flint said nothing. That was answer enough.

Anger was the only emotion that had kept John going during his recovery so he knew it well as it bubbled up, red hot. “You actually thought I’d left for good, didn’t you? Took the treasure, never looked back?” He scoffed. “You son of a bitch.” 

Some small part of his mind registered the hesitation flickering across Flint’s face but he brushed it aside.

He strode into Flint’s space, the pain in his leg only fueling that fire. “That thought never crossed my mind, _Captain_.” He spat the word, only now coming to understand a difference existed between James and the man in front of him. 

This was Captain Flint, the dreaded pirate. The villain. 

“That doesn’t matter to you at all, does it?” He glared at Flint, daring him to say something, to deny him. Suddenly, his fire went out, all energy gone and his entire body sagged. He couldn’t deal with this anymore. “Get the fuck out.”

“No.”

The embers of that anger stirred again, begging for any excuse to roar back to life. “Excuse me?”

“I’m not leaving.” Flint’s face gave nothing away – or that was his intent. 

John noticed the little ticks that he couldn’t hide: the quickening of his breaths, the tension in his shoulders, the uncertainty wrinkling his brow. He shrugged. “Fine.” 

Though going to bed was now an ordeal, he went about it slowly, meticulously – deliberately ignoring Flint. He came out of the bathroom in an old tee and shorts, his prosthetic visible. Sinking into the mattress, keeping his back to Flint, he removed his prosthetic, piece by piece, and laid it on the ground beside the bed.

The wound stung to touch still but the doctors said the pain should diminish over the next weeks. 

“You were right,” Flint admitted, his voice soft, broken. “For what it’s worth. I thought you had left. After our previous conversations, it was hard to think otherwise.”

John hissed in a breath, whether from the physical pain of his leg or the emotional pain those words inflicted he didn’t know.

Flint walked around the bed until he stood in front of John. “It was easier to think that, at first.” He gazed down at him. “But I knew when Billy returned something was wrong.” 

“And yet you still accused me?” John retorted, unable to keep the bitterness out of his voice.

Flint closed his eyes, drew a ragged breath. “Anger is more palatable than helplessness.”

Those words barreled into John, knocking his breath out of him. For Flint to sum up John’s own feelings so perfectly – to suffer under them himself…

There was a history behind Flint’s words, an old wound that John had inadvertently ripped open. But there was a confession, and a not-quite apology, there too that he hadn’t thought to hear. He tried to catch Flint’s gaze but, even as Flint knelt beside him, he couldn’t look at him. 

John was fully aware of how his treacherous heart betrayed him in his dealings with Flint – how he cared far more than was logical. He had harbored no hope that Flint would return the sentiment. Yet he still wondered. “Helpless?” he asked, his very nerves jittery, his heart hammering in his ribcage. “How so?”

He suppressed a shudder as Flint’s eyes snapped open and traveled over every inch of him before meeting his, burning with an intensity that threatened to consume them both. “Because,” Flint growled, utterly invading what little personal space John had left, “if you were injured or dead, there would be nothing I could do. I survived that once. Not again.”

John opened his mouth to reply but words failed him. When he found his voice, all he could say was, “James.” It was a prayer, a benediction. “I’m all right.” The unspoken _now_ hung between them, the air heavy with anticipation. He reached up, his hand acting of its own volition, and wiped the tear away that threatened to fall down Flint’s cheek.

Flint stilled, searching for something in John’s eyes. “You’re lying.”

John smiled – he couldn’t help it. “Am I?” He leaned over, guiding Flint up to him. Glancing up one last time, for Flint to tell him to stop – to say anything – he pressed his lips to Flint’s.

Any barrier between them disappeared – every emotion Flint felt tore through John, ripping his into the smallest of pieces, only to put him back together.

Flint made a pained noise and pulled away, looking anywhere but at John. “I can’t,” he whispered and vanished, leaving a gaping hole in his absence.

John stared at the spot Flint had been, his vision clouding. He wiped the tears away.

The stack of books on the nightstand taunted him. With one final burst of furious energy, he hurled his prosthetic across the bed, roaring his frustration, the books falling off, the spines bending and pages fluttering on some imaginary breeze.

He had shown weakness and Flint had exploited it.

He curled against his pillow. If he could slow his mind down, he might even grab a few hours of non-nightmare riddled sleep. 

But he couldn’t feel anything.

Sleep, when it came, was plagued by nightmares.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry this has taken so long to get out. It's kicked my ass more times than I care to count and real life hasn't helped much. But I hope this delivers what I've meant it to. :)


	10. Chapter 10

“You’re awful quiet,” Muldoon commented as he and John hauled away tree limbs. Since Billy, Muldoon, and DeGroot had finished his house while he had been trapped in Miami, John needed a new project that did not involve the fucking treasure and he couldn’t bear to be near Flint – not after that night – so he began cleaning up the yard.

Billy couldn’t help because of his day job – what that was, John had no intention of finding out – and John still couldn’t bring himself to approach DeGroot for anything not related to the treasure. But, despite the long hours under the sometimes scorching sun, Muldoon had jumped on the opportunity.

John cursed how perceptive the man was and how transparent he had been. Muldoon wasn’t Flint – he shouldn’t have been able to read John so easily. “It hasn’t exactly been an easy couple of months,” he retorted, hoping to convince him to drop the subject. He hadn’t even mentioned his fight with Flint to Max; he wasn’t about to spill that to Muldoon of all people.

Muldoon chuckled as he hurled the tree limb onto the pile to burn. “Fair enough.”

They walked back to the offending trees, John reaching over his head with the clippers. He pressed the blades together with all his might but, as the branch gave, he shifted his weight onto his bad leg. Pain shot up his spine and he, the clippers, and the branch clattered to the ground.

Muldoon rushed over and helped him to his feet. “You don’t need to be doing this,” he assured him. “I can finish it, if you need a break.”

John grimaced as he limped back to the front steps, Muldoon a shadow at his side. “I’m useless without something to do,” he groaned, lowered himself gently onto the top step. “Until we go after the treasure, or until Vane decides to actually meet with us, this is all I can do. I’m worthless at anything else.”

“You shouldn’t talk like that,” Muldoon told him. “I’ve seen my fair share of useless fucks as long as I’ve lived on this island. You ain’t one.”

John had to laugh, no matter how weak it sounded. “This is the second time in as many months that you’re offering emotional support,” he quipped, staring up at Muldoon, shielding his eyes from the sun.

Muldoon tossed back an entire glass of water. “Does that mean we’re married?” he asked over his shoulder as he returned to work.

John only shook his head, a slight smile crossing his face. He pushed off the stair, his face contorting in pain.

Muldoon was back in his space in a heartbeat. “Fucking hell, man. You don’t got one lick of sense, do you?”

John grabbed the clippers off the ground. Another tree branch gave way, crashing down beside him. “If I did, I’d be miles away from here.” 

“If you did,” Muldoon countered, “we’d have Vane’s men after us. You may not get it but you saved our lives with what you did.” He nodded once at John before returning to work.

Having plenty to ponder with that confession, John glanced back at the house several times, half expecting to see Flint’s shadow darkening one of the windows. 

Muldoon was right – he had been quieter than normal – but he had bottled everything up so tightly. Reaching out for someone in that darkness he had lost himself in only to have that someone recoil had taught him well the lesson he had failed to learn before.

He would not forget it again.

Flint’s absence gnawed at him and he only had himself to blame. His actions had been foolish, a mistake. Muldoon helping him for the better part of a week, gave him the excuse to stay out of the house and forced him to exercise both his weak legs and his prosthetic. The work kept his mind blessedly blank – each night when he collapsed in his bed, he saw the books surrounding him, books that he had wanted to read to Flint, and the anger welled up, hot and uncontrollable. 

He couldn’t live the whole of each day consumed by that anger though Flint had done well to avoid him in the days since their last encounter. John couldn’t have said what he might have done, wasn’t sure he could have been held responsible for it.

As a break to the monotony and to step away from something he had started viewing more as a prison than a home, John stopped by the tavern one evening after a grueling day of work.

Eleanor hadn’t called him about coming back to his job and John hadn’t pressed the matter. He wasn’t sure he was ready to start that again.

“You are dead on your feet,” Mr. Scott commented drily as John walked in.

John raised an eyebrow. “Foot, actually. If you remember, Vane’s men happily relieved me of the other.”

Mr. Scott nodded, his eyes solemn but his mouth curled up at John’s dry tone. “Yes, they did. I do recall visiting you during your recovery.” He lowered his voice conspiratorially. “Though I have heard rumors he let Anne Bonny loose on them.” He scanned the room. “If that’s the case, no one will ever find the bodies.”

There was no point in confirming or denying those rumors. John would let the people think what they would. When Rackham and Bonny had paid their visit, told him of what she’d done, he had felt nothing but when he heard people on the street passing the story around, some twisted monster buried deep inside reveled in it.

Anne Bonny terrified people and, as she acted in some way on his behalf, he terrified them by proxy. It was a heady feeling.

“I should warn you,” Mr. Scott broke into his thoughts, “you no longer have a job here.”

John blinked, unable to keep the shock off his face. “I – what? Why not?”

Mr. Scott pointed at a group of people John didn’t recognize. “They arrived shortly after we returned from visiting you in Miami.” His voice lowered further, dripping with disgust. “British secret service.”

John crossed his arms, though his gaze swept the room thoroughly for Dufresne. “And this affects my job here how?” He didn’t have to explain to Mr. Scott that this was his only source of income, one that he could barely live off of as it was. Unable to quite believe what he was hearing, he watched Eleanor weave among the newcomers, watched her expressions and body language. 

Realization, when it hit, hit hard.

“She’s working with them.”

“It wasn’t of her on volition, at first,” Mr. Scott explained. “They charged her with aiding and abetting traitors to the state and, since she is still a British citizen, the punishment for such a crime is severe.”

John swore under his breath. Which traitors – whether real or fabricated – she had aided did not concern him in the slightest. He had finally taken care of his problem with Vane’s crew and had hoped for a moment to pause and catch his breath – to deal with whatever had happened with Flint. 

He should have known better. 

Nassau was an endless stream of ridiculous problem after ridiculous problem, fit for the Old West or the age of piracy, not the 21st century. Any sane person would have fled back to England, tail tucked between their legs, but John was nothing if not insane. “She seems far more willing now,” he noted bitterly.

Mr. Scott sighed with the resignation of a man who had tried and tried and failed to talk her out of her course of action. “She and Mr. Rogers have entered into a mutually beneficial relationship.”

Of course they had, John mused.

Rogers was the easiest by far to pick out of the crowd. He carried the air of authority with the smugness of someone born to it.

Even at a distance, the hairs on the back of John’s neck stood on end. There was no accounting for Eleanor’s taste – he hoped the man was good enough in bed to warrant dealing with his piss poor personality. He turned back to Mr. Scott. “Where does that leave you?”

Mr. Scott smiled. “Much as I would like to help you on your hunt, my place is here.”

John acquiesced. It had not been how he had meant his question to be construed but he couldn’t lie and say that he didn’t wish to have someone with Mr. Scott’s expertise on his side. “Fair enough. I wish you the best of luck.”

Mr. Scott grabbed his arm as he turned to leave. “Be on your guard, John. I have seen you wield that silver tongue as a sword – you can talk even the most steadfast of men into achieving your goals. But these men are not playing games. If you cross them, they will kill you.”

The physical presence of those men on the island, with Eleanor, had shaken Mr. Scott to his core and, though John sensed something far greater was at stake, he only thanked Mr. Scott for his time and his advice before returning home.

John threw one last glance at the British before slipping out of the tavern, none of them the wiser.

He had plenty to think on, plenty to discuss with his crew.

Vane finally called, several days after John had returned to Nassau, and scheduled a meeting between their two crews. They decided on a neutral location, a local restaurant on the other side of town from Eleanor’s tavern – they were less likely to meet anyone they knew there and less likely to stir up trouble for each other.

Muldoon drove John, Max picking up Billy and DeGroot. They found Vane, Rackham and Bonny tucked in the back corner at a larger round table.

After pleasant introductions, if slightly stilted and tense, they ordered food and John opened the discussion. He would not bring up the past if Vane saw fit to do the same, though his heart beat slightly faster simply being in Vane’s presence – old traumas died hard. 

He saw no need to waste time on small talk either. They didn’t have it to waste since the British were already as close to the prize as they were. “Rackham mentioned you had information regarding our British friends and Dufresne.”

Vane took a long drag of his cigar. “I do,” he answered simply. “But if you think I’ll part this that information for nothing, you’re mistaken.”

Max smiled sweetly. “Of course you won’t.”

John laid a hand on her leg. A quick look told her he understood her anger but he needed this meeting to succeed. “I expected nothing less. I have it on good authority though that Dufresne has defected to the British so it seems I am only in need of the first part of your information.” His smile matched Max’s but there was a sharpness to it, an edge that was very dangerous.

Vane nodded thoughtfully. “Then that’s what I’ll offer.”

“And what do you want in return for that information?” Billy asked, leaning closer.

Rackham replied before Vane could, “A portion of the treasure of course.” As if they were idiots for even asking.

Muldoon snorted but John seriously considered it. “We are one man down. His portion I think we could reasonably part with.” He looked to each member of his crew.

None disagreed. Better the portion ended up in Vane’s hands than a sniveling bastard like Dufresne.

According to Vane, the British had received two tips regarding Flint’s treasure, one from Dufresne, the other from one of Eleanor’s associates.

“That explains why they have her in their back pocket,” John muttered. 

Vane took that news very poorly, revealing far more about his history with her than perhaps he intended.

“We will have to move quickly then,” Max replied. Though she hid it well, the news of Eleanor’s betrayal devastated her too. John caught Anne grab her hand out of the corner of his eye – he couldn’t say he liked the woman, even after her actions against her own crew, but he appreciated her supporting Max.

John nodded. “Our timetable has shifted.”

Muldoon eyed him with concern. “You can’t go out on a boat. Doctor said not to.” He made it clear the venture would not get off the ground unless John was at the helm.

They were at an impasse.

Vane looked over at Billy. “You’ve been quiet. Any ideas?”

Billy inhaled, shooting a nervous glance at John. “A couple.”

After he laid his plans out, John had to admit the man was brilliant. They would wage a war from the shadows, occupy and distract the British long enough for John to recover, then steal the treasure from under their noses. Billy wanted John to terrify the patrons at the tavern into turning against the British after a couple of months, and to offer them a chance to see the error of their ways.

“Because who can take their eyes off the one-legged creature?” John held Billy’s gaze, half wanting him to deny the implications of his plan.

Billy looked away first.

Despite his discomfort, John threw his support behind the plan. It was the only one they had and it could possibly work.

A clap of thunder rattled the building, all of the occupants startling at the noise.

“Storm’s coming,” Anne muttered, glancing up from under her hat. “Gonna be a bad one.”

Rackham and Vane exchanged a worried look. “We should get home. If Anne says it will be bad, expect nothing short of Noah’s flood.”

They quickly paid for their meal, filing into their respective cars as giant globs of water that no longer could be called drops fell from the sky. By the time, Muldoon and John had ensured Max, Billy and DeGroot safely arrived home, the road had disappeared behind a curtain of water. Only the incessant angry streaks of lightning across the sky broke through the deluge, illuminating the road however briefly.

John kept his mouth shut so Muldoon could focus on driving.

Muldoon leaned over the steering wheel, squinting through the rain and the wipers going a hundred miles an hour. “Never seen it rain like this before,” he muttered. “Not if it weren’t a hurricane.”

John never wanted to see a hurricane if it was anything like this.

Water sloshed over the pavement as the sky continued to pour gallon upon gallon of water upon ground which was quickly becoming saturated.

“Turn around,” John said, unable to shake a bad feeling. “There’s no reason to fight this. I can crash with Max tonight.”

Muldoon looked up at the sky through the torrents of rain though he saw as little, or less than John did. “Might not be a bad idea.” He started driving back toward town, but a rush of water swept the car off the road into a swiftly flowing creek.

For a moment, neither of them moved, the reality of their situation not setting in quickly – their bodies not processing the shock. When the adrenaline kicked in, they struggled to undo their seatbelts as the car rapidly filled with water. Muldoon kicked the windshield out and pulled John free. The current dragged them away from the sinking vehicle no matter how they fought against it. John managed to grab hold of vegetation along an embankment, catching Muldoon by the collar as he floated past. They hung there as the raging rapids pounded them and rain continued to fall.

The vegetation gave way suddenly, the ground unable to bear their weight and they were swept away again. John saw the debris hurtling towards them. He shouted, “Watch out!” over the din but neither he nor Muldoon could move fast enough to avoid it. It pinned Muldoon against something hard and metallic – in the dark and the rain, John couldn’t make out what it was.

Muldoon screamed, his leg crushed. 

John winced, knowing too well the agony of tendons ripping in half, of bones shattering under the force of some cruel twist of fate, and he knew that if Muldoon couldn’t get free, he’d drown.

“Fucking hell!” Muldoon cried, barely audible over the storm. “Get me out!”

John gripped his hand, tried pulling him free, but he couldn’t catch purchase on the ground beneath him with his prosthetic.

And the water continued to rise.

Even as the storm passed and the rain slowed to almost a trickle, John still could not get Muldoon free, the water almost covering him completely. He tried calling out for help but they were miles away from anything – no one would find them.

Not in time.

Muldoon grabbed his hand, desperate for an anchor – something to hang on to – and John held it hard, held him close.

And they fought – the both of them – one last desperate fight, John begging the god that had so brutally ignored him time and again to save his friend, until there was nothing left to fight for, no one left to save. Muldoon had gone limp, his eyes wide and unseeing. 

John couldn’t control the shuddering sobs that racked his body or the raw outpouring of anger as he screamed, “Fuck!” over and over until his voice gave out and he bloodied his fist against the debris that had become Muldoon’s grave.

Disbelief chased away all other feelings until all John felt was numbness. Nothingness. 

He was still holding Muldoon’s hand, still wound around the debris for dear life, when Billy and DeGroot found him, only letting go as they dragged him to safety and higher ground. They drove him to Max’s with the promise they’d retrieve Muldoon’s body.

Max stripped off his soaking wet clothes and wrapped him in towels and blankets.

He had nothing left to fend her off.

Anne might have been there, might have snuck out after his arrival, but he couldn’t remember. All he could see were those eyes staring up at him, red with tears.

He shook in Max’s arms, his entire body shivering. 

She held him, rocked him, shushing him gently, softly, but he cried only after she had gone to bed.

Helplessness was not something John cared to feel, in any capacity. He had been helpless to fight the events that forced him to Nassau but to be helpless to save a friend damned him so much more.

If he picked up a bottle each of whiskey and of very expensive tequila on his way home the next morning…well, he fucking deserved it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, the response to this story has been phenomenal. I cannot thank you enough. <3


	11. Chapter 11

The house swallowed him in its emptiness as he limped through the front door. He had pointedly ignored the half-done trees and bushes in the yard, a job that he would now have to complete alone. 

Everywhere he looked, he found traces of Muldoon – where the man had touched his life in the short months they had known each other. The sofa in the living room had come from Muldoon, he had supplied half the maps they had been using. It was as if the house now had two ghosts and both saw fit to haunt John in different ways.

He didn’t immediately try to drown himself in alcohol but his leg was on fire and his heart was numb. He wouldn’t hold out very long. 

He stared at the two bottles in front of him, the whiskey and the tequila, as he collapsed onto the sofa, his still wet clothes rubbing against his skin – Max hadn’t had any spare. The pain in his leg lessened and worsened simultaneously at the change of pressure.

It wasn’t the guilt gnawing at his insides that finally forced his hand, or the image of Muldoon staring blankly up at him, the man – the soul – irrevocably gone. It wasn’t the sharp pain searing up his leg from the dirt and debris that had lodged in his prosthetic, digging into the tender skin. But he felt Flint’s presence in that room, pervasive, invisible, and his overwhelming desire to say something, or do something, infuriated John. That he could even stand there after the stunt he had pulled – John twisted the top off the bottle of whiskey and downed a sizeable amount.

The burn of alcohol sliding down his throat still startled him but he no longer coughed and sputtered. After the incident in London, he had turned to alcohol and had forced the situation from bad to disastrous. He had paid dearly for burying himself in the bottle.

He had no intention of drinking too much, too fast, but the disapproval he felt from Flint was more than enough justification to keep going. Another couple of gulps followed – he barely even tasted them. His fingers and toes had already started to warm, a telltale sign he was on the verge of tipsy.

A hand stopped him before he could take another sip, the bottle halfway back to his lips. His treacherous heart had missed the tingle of electricity that sparked across where they touched. 

“If your aim is to drink yourself to death, you’re well on your way.”

John pointedly removed Flint’s hand and loudly took another drink. “You’re quite perceptive. However did you guess?” The alcohol twisted his tongue but not so badly as to slur his words. If he kept drinking at this rate though, that would come soon. He couldn’t imagine holding a civil conversation in that state.

“What are you doing, John?”

Flint’s use of his name, as if they were still friends – still anything – poured red over John’s eyes. He laughed. “You expect me to tell you?”

Flint ripped the bottle from his grip and strode to the sink, pouring the rest of its contents out.

John stood up, stumbling slightly on his bad leg, stringing together a series of swears that almost made Flint blush – if he hadn’t been so angry, hadn’t been so through with everything, they might have made him blush. “I wasn’t finished with that.” And he wasn’t. Each swig of whiskey beat back Muldoon’s wide eyes – he couldn’t bear to have them staring at him from the forefront of his mind.

He staggered into the kitchen, bottle of tequila hanging limply in his hand. Even tipsy as he was, he could still feel the anger radiating off of Flint in waves, a deep anger fueled by confusion and regret. If the last few months hadn’t happened, John might have cared but his own anger and grief drowned out anything else.

The room spun, every limb felt just this side of too heavy, but he twisted the top off the bottle and put it to his lips, intending to chug a large portion of it before Flint could stop him. Some small part of his mind registered how petulant and childish that was – the same part that he meant to drown in very high proof alcohol.

Flint knocked the bottle out of his hand. It smashed against the hardwood, shattering into thousands of tiny pieces, shards glistening in the splattered alcohol. 

John jumped, the action and the noise startling him. He watched the liquid pool out across the hardwood, his brain struggling to keep up with and process what was happening. The horror of being trapped, sober, with his mind, and the fear that accompanied it, far outweighed his fear of Flint in that moment. He glared up at Flint for a very long moment, the tension between them stretched too tightly, ready to snap at the slightest provocation.

“You bastard,” he muttered.

Flint slammed him against the wall, knocking all the air out of his lungs. 

The shift of weight on his prosthetic shot pain up his spine and he would have collapsed under it had Flint not supported him, the smallest shift in Flint’s expression revealing more than he intended.

Whether because of the alcohol burning through his veins or because of the horrors he had faced, John did not give into the fear that set his heart racing. He held Flint’s gaze in a bold dare to see who would look away first. 

“What the fuck happened out there?” Flint asked. It bordered on a demand but Flint wouldn’t force him – John trusted him that far. “You’re no drinking man.”

He laughed again. It sounded fragile and bitter even to his ears. “Please don’t pretend it matters to you. It doesn’t. So why bother asking?”

Pain flashed against Flint’s face, revealing a hole in the wall Flint had built around himself.

If John hadn’t been quite so tipsy, he would have used that hole to his advantage. Instead, he shoved Flint aside but Flint grabbed his arm, holding him fast, his anger pressed out, suffocating. “I didn’t take you for an coward,” he growled. 

John blinked at him, almost stupidly, as those words sank it. 

And they did.

They weaseled their way through the chinks in John’s armor, under his skin, until they settled in his mind, around his heart. Stupid, John could handle – he played that up when he needed to – but coward?

That burned.

“No?” John asked, not bothering to hide the bitterness in his voice. “What did you take me for then?” After their last encounter, he wasn’t sure he wanted the answer.

Nor did Flint seem to have one to give him.

“Because it seems to me that of the two of us, you were the one who ran away.” He ensured Flint was looking at him as he delivered the killing blow. “At least I haven’t put a bullet in my skull.” They were cruel words, made no less so by the pain behind them.

Flint’s grip on his arm went slack. His whole body went slack, the edges blurring into shadows, and he vanished.

John fought to steady himself but the sudden loss of support was too much to compensate for. He slid to the floor beside the puddle of alcohol and glass and wished he could remember what it felt like to not hurt.

His phone rang and, with fumbling fingers, he answered. “Max.” His voice shook. He needed something, anything, to anchor himself with – needed to wash the taste of ashes from his mouth.

Her disapproval radiated from the phone’s speaker. “You’re drunk, aren’t you?”

John eyed the mess to his right, careful to breathe slowly through his nose. “Not nearly as drunk as I wish I was.”

“John,” she pleaded. “What happened, it was not –“

He cut her off, “Please don’t say it wasn’t my fault. If he hadn’t been driving me home…”

“If he hadn’t, one of us would have. We are your friends, John. Your family.”

His nerves, already shaky and unsteady from the events of the night and the barrage of alcohol, jumped and skittered violently. The thought of Max dying in those waters because of his weakness – John retreated into himself. “Did they retrieve his body?” he asked, keeping his voice level.

“Earlier this morning,” she confirmed, her worry loud and plain – she made no attempts to hide it.

“Thank you.” He pressed the end button even as her protests rang hollowly in his ears. Simple as that, he was adrift on an open sea and he was falling beneath the waves.

The phone fell out of his hand, his muscles trembling at the frigid wetness clinging to him, from the loss and grief and utter despair sinking into his bones.

Flint knelt beside him – where had he come from? – picked the phone up, turned it over, examining it as if it would give him John’s secrets. His hand ghosted over John’s bare arm. _You’re freezing._

Alcohol did that – shock did that, John wanted to tell him but his mouth refused to move – Flint hadn’t meant for him to hear those words so his body couldn’t respond. It was almost as if he were viewing the scene from above, standing apart from himself. He was so cold.

As if in a trance, he took from phone from Flint and staggered up the stairs, every other step pure agony. Though Flint followed him, stood behind him – watched him – he stripped out of the damp clothes that smelled like rain and wet grass and somehow found a shirt and sweatpants comfortable enough to wear over his prosthetic. He sat on the edge of the bed, staring at nothing.

_You’re right._

John felt Flint sit beside him but he couldn’t find the energy to move. His eyes fell shut as another stabbing pain shot up his leg. When he opened them, Flint was gone. He felt the absence like a physical wound. After their last encounter, was this all they would be? Flint disappearing whenever he felt like it, him slowly breaking apart at the seams, which were only just holding him together as it was. 

There was a hole somewhere on the island that had his name on it – he just had to find it and crawl in it.

But Flint returned carrying a bowl of warm water and clean cloths. He knelt on the floor near John’s bad leg and carefully, gently, rolled up the pants and removed the prosthesis, his hands deftly operating the mechanism that held it in place.

The wound stung as fresh air hit it.

John watched as Flint carefully cleaned the dirt and debris from his leg, as he responded to every flinch, every hiss of pain. Had he not already known of the difference between Flint and James, such a show of gentle affection would have perplexed him greatly.

It still did.

“What did you mean?” he asked, his voice breaking the silence between them, the tension shifting into some strange thing that he couldn’t identify even though it hovered at the edge of his consciousness, wanting to be named. “What is this?”

Flint’s hands stilled but he didn’t look up.

John wasn’t sure what he wanted it to be, wasn’t sure Flint knew either. He half expected Flint to disappear again but Flint followed his pattern of proving him wrong, especially when it most inconvenienced him.

“What happened today?” Flint asked, deflecting the question.

John sucked in a deep breath of air. How could he relay what had happened? How could he tell Flint that he had been too weak to save Muldoon’s life – that Flint’s accusation was far more correct than he knew – that he was a coward, running away to drink down his failure?

“Your friend was lucky.”

John recoiled. He couldn’t fathom how Flint knew about Muldoon, if he heard the conversation with Max, but his words horrified him nonetheless. “He died today. He drowned in the storm. And you call him lucky?” He stared at his hands.

Flint squeezed the water out of the cloth, dabbing at the angry, red skin around John’s wound. “There are no legacies in the life I led,” he clarified, the house sighing around him. “No monuments, no history. Just the water.”

John could still hear the rush of it in his ears, feel it pounding against him as he struggled to free Muldoon.

“It pays us and then it claims us. Swallows us whole. As if we’d never been alive at all.” Flint’s gaze landed on where John’s hands clenched the sheets. “You’ll remember him. That’s more legacy than most.”

“Is that what you want?” John asked, the thought invading his mind, spilling out of his mouth, the alcohol removing all inhibition. He caught the tightness of Flint’s shoulders, the straightening of his back, and smiled self-deprecatingly. “I forgot – I’m not welcome in your head.”

“And yet you’ve found your way in anyway.” There was no bite to Flint’s words. If anything, the emotion dancing between them was…peace.

John considered him. If he had full control of his mind, he could have deciphered the meaning behind what Flint had said. “I can’t play these games tonight, Captain. What are you saying?”

Flint’s gaze softened. “An apology, if you’ll have it.”

“An apology?” John repeated, testing the word out.

Flint nodded once. “You should let that air out. If you keep constant pressure on it, it will never heal. The wound will become inflamed and fester. Men die from that.” He spoke with an authority that only came from experience.

John noted how he avoided actually answering his question. He was willing to play along as it suited him. “You’ve seen this kind of thing before then?”

He watched, mesmerized, as Flint’s face transformed with memory. 

“Our cook lost his leg. It was an accident but I had to take it to save his life.” Flint stared down at his hands. “I cannot count how many men I killed before or after but it was then I became a butcher.”

Such a confession was not drawn from nothing and John was left to wonder what he had done to conjure it, what wicked words falling from his lips ushered it forth. 

“When I first met my quartermaster, Mr. Gates, and he asked me my name… I feared the man I was about to create.” Flint’s voice was barely above a whisper as he dipped the cloth back in the water.

“So why create him in the first place?” John asked.

Flint kept his gaze fixed on his task but his mouth twisted in a rueful smile. “Because you were right.” He finally looked up, met John’s gaze.

John leaned forward, laid a hand over Flint’s. “I can’t grant you absolution for acts I never saw. And I can’t accept your apology.” As Flint pulled away, John followed, gripping the edge of his sleeve. He could disappear at any moment. John refused to let him. “It’s taking everything to not slur my words so you can imagine how drunk I am.”

“Whose fault is that?” Flint snapped.

John arched an eyebrow, struggling and failing to keep a smile off his face. He guided Flint back to the bed to sit beside him. “Very funny.” He slid his hand down from Flint’s sleeve to grasp his hand, and his heart soared when Flint squeezed his in return. “Would you rather I forgive you now, when you couldn’t be certain who was speaking: me or the alcohol?” He left the other option unsaid – Flint would hear it.

Flint pinned the pants’ leg so it would not drag the ground or catch in the sheets. “Get some sleep then. We’ll speak in the morning.”

John caught Flint’s gaze raking across the books on the nightstand as he stood. “The first few nights I spent in the hospital, I couldn’t sleep,” he murmured, his words grabbing Flint and holding him tightly. He couldn’t say where they came from. Some deep corner of his soul tormented by the loss of a friend.

“You’re in no shape to read tonight,” Flint admonished.

John swung his legs onto the bed and shifted back against the pillows. “I suppose you’re right,” he conceded after a moment. He had to smile at the exasperation in Flint’s eyes as Flint retreated down the hall, returning with a book in his hands.

Curious, John tried to get a better look at the volume as Flint sat before him on the edge of the bed.

_Meditations_ by Marcus Aurelius.

“I wasn’t aware you had such a fondness for the classics,” he quipped.

Flint closed his eyes, turned away, clutching the book in his hands as if it were his only anchor. Without a word, he held it out for John to take.

John handled it carefully, the spine worn, the pages cracked with age. He admired the rich red leather covering as he opened it. The handwritten note that greeted him was not at all what he was expecting. 

_“James_

_My truest love._

_Know no shame._

_T.H.”_

He read and reread that note, aware of some profound significance but utterly unable to decipher it. The only people he knew of in Flint’s life were Miranda and the unnamed quartermaster, who John very much doubted was the author. Whoever T.H. referred to, they were a mystery to him. He had intruded on some deep and hidden corner of Flint’s soul and he very much felt like an outsider. 

Closing the book, he pressed it back in Flint’s hands. “You shouldn’t have shown me this. If I intended to harm you – “

“What harm can you do to a dead man?” Flint murmured.

John sat up until his chest almost touched Flint’s side; he could feel the energy thrum off Flint’s skin. 

Flint turned to face him. At that close distance, the fires behind Flint’s eyes were more than enough to set him on fire.

“I would rather not be given the opportunity to find out,” he whispered.

The fire threatened to consume them both. ‘Then you should have taken the gold and run long before now.” Flint pressed their foreheads together. Without looking at the book in his hands, he quietly began reciting its words.

When John slept, he did not dream of storms or water or Muldoon’s vacant eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry this has taken so long. Between work and school applications, I haven't had time to think straight. But it's here now so yay!
> 
> As always, feedback is much appreciated.


	12. Chapter 12

Muldoon’s funeral was a small affair. Billy had him cremated and they scattered his ashes into the sea off a beach not far from John’s house. Aside from their small crew, no one on the island knew he existed, much less cared that he was dead.

John stood on that beach long after everyone else had gone home – Max kissed him on the cheek before she got into Billy’s car – the wind beating him, tearing at his shirt that hung too loosely off his thin frame. He hadn’t shed a tear while Billy and DeGroot said their words or while he said his. But left alone, he sank to the ground and sobbed.

The sand crept into every fold of fabric, every crevice. It dug its claws into the raw skin beneath his prosthetic.

And the sky was dark and grey above him, threatening rain.

He limped home before that rain fell. He had no desire to touch it again, to smell it as it sank into the earth. As he unlocked his front door and walked inside, a funny thought struck him.

At least now he had an excuse to never go back to England.

He scrounged for something resembling food in the kitchen, the refrigerator yielding nothing of value. The mess of glass and alcohol from the night before was mysteriously gone – as if nothing had happened. He couldn’t swear anything had. When he woke with a splitting headache – the worst aftereffect of consuming large amounts of alcohol – no sign of Flint or the book with its all too revealing note, John half thought he had dreamed the whole thing.

How he had wished that he had dreamt up the storm as well – that, if he closed his eyes and embraced sleep again, he would return to the meeting with Vane and Muldoon would still be alive.

Reality was far less kind than those pretended dreams. Muldoon was dead – no power on earth or in heaven could undo that. The meeting with Vane and recovering the treasure – those held no meaning anymore. 

If John were truly honest with himself, the treasure had lost its meaning months ago.

And Flint. Christ, he had no fucking clue about Flint, had no ability to devote more than a cursory amount of his mental capacity toward figuring him out. Not when a litany of Muldoon’s name pounded in time with his pulse in his still-throbbing head.

He startled at the first loud clap of thunder, backed away from the windows as the storm whipped the trees into a raging frenzy, all desire to eat gone. He tucked himself into the corner of the sofa and stared at the unlit fireplace. 

Flint appeared behind him, a sensation not unlike returning to the earmarked pages of a favorite book.

He fervently hoped Flint wouldn’t say anything, would keep any of his platitudes to himself. What Flint had said last night about the sea being their only legacy resonated in the empty holes in his soul.

“Are you all right?” was the only question Flint asked as he approached.

“No,” was his simple answer. He trusted Flint to read what he needed to in the undercurrents in his voice, on his face. “Does it get easier?”

The sadness in the smile Flint gave him told him plenty.

“That’s what I thought.” He fiddled with his prosthetic, debating whether or not to remove it and let his wound breathe.

Flint caught his aborted movement. “Were you planning on going somewhere else today?” He nodded at the rain hammering against the window. “The weather’s not good for it.”

How Flint knew exactly what thoughts flitted through his mind, John couldn’t quite figure out but the annoyance he might have felt at being so easily read was nowhere to be found. He needed someone to read him, to understand him.

He rubbed his forehead, willing the pain away. It didn’t work – it never worked – but it shot stars across his field of vision that he could focus on. “I would prefer not to stay here all day.”

Flint’s steps forward were strangely hesitant. He held out a glass of water and a handful of pain pills, both of which John accepted gratefully. As John watched, cautious, Flint sat beside him on the sofa and, once again, quickly and expertly removed the metal and plastic contraption from his leg. He wiped away the irritating sand and returned the prosthetic to its proper place.

John regarded Flint’s work as a detached observer. It wasn’t his leg Flint was cleaning. Which meant there was no ulterior motive to the action. But there had been before… “What happened last night?” he asked, staring resolutely at the glass of water in his hands.

He didn’t have to look at Flint or see the furrowing of his brow, the slight twist of his mouth – the barest beginnings of a frown – to tell Flint’s confusion.

“You don’t remember any of it?”

John couldn’t unhear the bitterness and hurt stirring under those words. “I wasn’t _that_ drunk,” he protested. 

Flint scoffed.

“No, I remember it.” He sat the glass on the table and turned to Flint. “But I don’t understand it.” 

“You don’t understand it?” Flint repeated, his voice barely more than a growl. “You, who see through me at every turn?” His eyes bore into John. “Even when I told you to stay out, you managed to weasel your way into my head. What the fuck do you not understand?”

John had to chuckle. “I have to admit something, and please don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re rather difficult to read, especially when alcohol is involved.” He scooted back until his back hit the sofa. “Conversations with you are remarkably difficult to navigate.”

“And yet you seem to navigate them, as you put it, perfectly fine,” Flint remarked.

“That was before.” John twisted and curled the hem of his shirt around his fingers but he held Flint’s gaze, determined to not look away. What “before” referred to – whether before he lost his leg, before Flint had left him floundering, before Muldoon’s death – John did not know.

He wasn’t sure it mattered. 

Flint broke John’s hold and stared down at his hands. “And now?”

“I don’t know, Captain,” John admitted. “Frankly, I was hoping you could tell me.” 

The sofa creaked as Flint rose and walked over to the window. He bowed his head.

“His name was Thomas Hamilton.”

The world skidded to a halt, collapsing on itself until nothing remained but Flint and the truth he was speaking.

_T.H._

John gaped at him. “Beg pardon?”

Flint continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “You probably wondered why I got so angry any time you mentioned Miranda?”

John nodded. “I had wondered that. Once or twice.”

Flint’s brow creased slightly. “She was his wife. She only took the last name Barlow when we fled here to escape persecution at the hands of the English.” He pulled _Meditations_ out of his coat and handed it over.

John flipped back to the scrawled note on the inside cover. _My truest love._ He had assumed, most people probably had, that Flint had had a relationship with her. Not him. “Did she know?”

Flint glanced down at the book. “About me and Thomas? Aye, she knew. She tried her best to protect us.” He took in the room. “She hated it here but England had made certain we knew we were no longer welcome on her shores.”

“You don’t have to tell me. I understand.”

Flint could have easily agreed. He could have moved the conversation toward a safer topic. It would have been safer territory since they had steered into unknown waters earlier.

He didn’t.

The time for skirting around the truth had passed. And, quite possibly, he knew it would keep John’s thoughts away from the trauma he had endured only a couple of days earlier.

“He was a good man, a son of a lord and a politician in his own right,” he murmured, “who was tasked with finding a solution to the problem of piracy in Nassau.”

“I thought the punishment for piracy was hanging,” John heard himself say. It wasn’t common knowledge – not for him – but it was part of the lifeblood of Nassau; she had claimed him for her own and her knowledge became his. “Somehow, I doubt that was his plan.”

Flint shook his head. “I saw too many men, and a couple of women, suffer that punishment.” Lightning illuminated in its eerie glow. “No, he sought to pardon them, put them to work under an honest governor.”

“And?”

“And Thomas’ father did not agree with that notion.”

John leaned forward. “What happened?”

It was as if Flint’s anger, burning after three hundred years, had a life of its own. “What any politician would do when threatened. He removed the threat.”

Their eyes met and, for the first time, John caught a glimpse of the source of Flint’s anguish and torment.

“Madness is such a hard thing to define, which makes it such an easy label to affix to one’s enemies. Once it had been applied to Thomas – once our relationship had been exposed, defiled, scandalized – everything ended.”

“And so Captain Flint was born.” John stared at Flint as if he’d never quite seen him before. The jagged edges that jostled and harried the world around him, that never quite seemed to fit, suddenly slid into place. 

Flint’s smile was twisted. “He has been a part of me my entire life. I joined the Navy to give him some release. When they threw Thomas into the asylum – when I heard he’d hanged himself – I had no reason to hold him back.” He stared into the fire. “Can you possibly imagine how utterly devastating it was to have been unable to save someone you love?”

John recalled how devastated Flint had been when he returned to Nassau and revealed the damage Vane’s men had done, how helpless Flint had sounded- had admitted he had felt. Had he really been so deaf, so blind, as to not see such blatant regard?

“I don’t know what to say.”

Flint pulled back to see John fully, confused. “You don’t have to say anything.”

“No,” he began slowly, “but… I am genuinely sorry, James.” Even staring at his back, John could see the depressed lines of his shoulders, the heaviness of his limbs. He let the lapse in the conversation stretch almost until it snapped. “I don’t know what you expect me to do with this information though.”

Flint’s furrowed brow told John he didn’t either.

“I know you and I haven’t exactly seen eye to eye since I returned to Nassau,” he murmured. 

Flint huffed, a shift of his head more than an expulsion of air. “No, I – I suppose not.” 

They would be stuck in this holding pattern forever, John realized, if neither forced the issue. And he was tired – tired of running, tired of hiding, tired of letting what he wanted most slip out of his grasp. He had watched Muldoon die in his arms – that was all he was willing to lose. And he suspected now that Flint was no more willing to lose him than he was to lose Flint.

He stood, his legs wobbling with effort and walked toward Flint, flinching as lightning flashed and thunder rattled the house. He closed his eyes against the pattering of raindrops. He wasn’t trapped in the car. Muldoon wasn’t crying out for help – words he repeated over and over as he tried to calm his racing heart. He took a shuddering breath. “In the time we’ve lived together, you’ve called me all manner of names. Stupid, stubborn, idiot.” He looked Flint up and down. “Coward.”

Flint inhaled sharply, surprised at the sudden shift in their conversation. “I apologized for that last night. Do you want an apology for the others as well?”

John shook his head. “Not at all. I made it clear from the moment we met I was in this purely for myself and for your treasure, whatever portion you deemed fit to give me.” He remembered those days like he remembered England – through a haze. “Everything I did those first few months, I did with the sole intention of securing that portion.”

The storm still raged outside but he no longer heard it.

“I had every opportunity to take the location and run,” he continued. “And yet I stayed.”

Flint shoved past him and paced in front of the fireplace. “I suppose you want my thanks.” No inflection in his voice at all.

John leaned back on the windowsill, crossed his arms over his chest. “If I wanted your thanks, we’d be having a very different conversation.”

Flint regarded him curiously. “What do you want then?”

“Well, that depends,” he hedged.

Flint smiled, a predator hunting his prey. “On what?”

Except John wasn’t prey any longer. If Flint was so damn determined to play cat and mouse, John resolved to be the cat. “How truthful you want me to be. How much are you willing to hear?”

A hand gripped his arm, held him fast. “I thought you said you wouldn’t lie to me. Don’t think because we haven’t seen eye to eye in recent days that I don’t know exactly what you’re thinking.” 

“And what is that? Exactly?” His mouth curled around the word, Flint’s word, snarling. He couldn’t bear this constant push and pull, reveal and retreat pattern. They’d held it for too long – if they were going to crash, John intended for it to be spectacular. “What am I thinking right now, _Captain_?”

“You were always going to accept my apology, alcohol or no.”

“Yes, I was.” He glared. “But that isn’t all you’re asking for, is it? That wasn’t why you just told me about Thomas.” He stepped forward, now toe to toe with Flint. “And that isn’t why I wanted to hear – no, needed to hear it.”

Flint’s eyes widened but he did not back away.

Emboldened, John continued. “When Vane and his thugs attacked me in the tavern, and they wanted the location of your treasure, I told myself I was keeping my mouth shut because I needed that treasure.” He walked across the sitting room until he came to the archway and he ran his hand down the wood grain. “When they came here with every intent to kill me and retrieve that page, even you expected me to run.”

“Why didn’t you?” Flint asked, unusually quiet, rooted in place. Suddenly, the storm came inside and it took the form of James Flint. He shook with barely contained fury. “Why didn’t you leave when you had the chance?”

John let the storm break over him. He stood his ground as Flint bore down on him, lightning and thunder and wind. “Did you know that I could have escaped Vane’s men, the ones who cost me my leg?” He spoke so softly he barely heard himself. “I could have told them everything they wanted to hear and they would have let me go.” 

“Why are you telling me this?” Flint asked as he looked down at John, his gaze too open and imploring, the pain that had lingered underneath finally dragged to the surface.

Caught in that gaze, John was utterly powerless to move. “So you can decide.”

“What are you saying?”

John heard the question for what it was. _What should I be asking for?_

“If you can’t figure that out,” he murmured, “then I should pack my bags.”

“What possessed you to be so idiotic?” Flint growled, his gaze shifting downward. “You told Max all you wanted freedom, that the treasure would help you do that. What could be worth this?” He motioned angrily at John’s leg and the prosthetic’s cold, harsh metal.

“You are!” The words flew out of John’s mouth before he could catch them and drag them back. They were out in the open and nothing, no power in the universe, could silence them.

Flint gaped at him, his mouth hanging open.

There was no going back. “You are,” John repeated quietly.

All of Flint’s words vanished with that simple declaration, all the walls he had erected tumbled down, until there was nothing between them but scant inches of air heavy with emotion.

John opened his mouth to say something else, to justify, to explain – why did he have to explain anything? – Flint reached up and tucked an errant curl behind his ear, his fingers trailing down the exposed skin of his neck. 

John’s breath caught in his throat as electricity tingled behind Flint’s touch.

“Why didn’t you say something?” Flint’s voice shook. “Before?”

“I thought I had.” He looked up at Flint and called it a victory when Flint’s eyes narrowed. “It’s not my fault if you weren’t listening.”

“You shit,” Flint muttered, with no real heat, and kissed him.

The man that kissed him wasn’t Captain Flint, James McGraw, or even the storm that had assumed his shape. He was the first rain after a drought that brought life back to barren ground and he was the only person that existed in John Silver’s universe.

Flint’s hand cupped the back of John’s head as he worked at John’s bottom lip.

John’s legs melted. He latched onto Flint’s arms for support, any support. If he let go, he knew he would fall.

And he knew Flint would catch him.

He moaned and Flint caught that too. He just prayed this wasn’t a dream, that Flint wouldn’t run again.

“You should stop worrying,” Flint murmured against his lips. 

“I believe there’s a phrase that has something to do with a pot and a kettle,” he teased in reply. “Perhaps you’ve heard of it.”

Flint chuckled, pressing his lips to John’s forehead. “Once or twice.” He wrapped his arms around John’s shoulders and pulled him close.

John ducked his head, resting against Flint’s chest, listening to… listening to his heartbeat. “I accept your apology,” he whispered.

Flint hooked a finger under John’s chin and raised his head until their gazes met. “Every time I think I have you figured out, you surprise me.”

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

Flint just smiled and kissed him again.

Later, after the sun had set and Flint had started a fire in the fireplace, they sat side by side on the sofa, John reading _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ , Flint looking over his shoulder. He raised Flint’s hand to his lips, only now seeing the myriad of freckles that covered his knuckles like stars. “Will you tell me more about him?”

Flint did.

The storm wore itself out, devolving into a soft rain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone for your kind and wonderful comments. They make writing this so worthwhile. <3


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no excuse for this taking so long. I just have not had the brain power because life has been running me ragged. My hope is that my school applications will be done in a couple of weeks and I'll have more time and energy for this :)
> 
> Thanks to everyone for being patient with me!

John had never had the opportunity of waking up next to someone else. For the first moments as consciousness returned, his brain pieced together sensory information haphazardly at best – the soft morning sunlight shining in through the window, a steady rhythm pressed against his cheek through soft fabric, an arm wrapped around his shoulders, the scent of salt and smoke and wood filling his nose. 

He knew it was Flint he was pressed against long before his brain consciously came to the same conclusion.

They hadn’t made it up the stairs. John recalled reading until his eyes fell shut but nothing after that. Flint must have moved him since they were currently curled up facing each other on the sofa, and he must have laid the book on the table since John wasn’t holding it and he didn’t think he was laying on it either.

Curled up against Flint, wrapped in his arms – protected – he thought such close contact would have chilled him but Flint was quite warm. 

Flint burned, an all-consuming fire, and John was more than willing to burn with him.

He shifted slightly and opened his eyes. The sight that greeted him almost stopped his heart.

Flint was asleep – since when did ghosts need sleep? With each rise and fall of his chest, he blurred just enough to notice and reformed. His expression was far more peaceful than anything John had seen on him awake. It was as if all the cares and worries that burdened him had vanished – in sleep, there was no anguish, no anger, no fear, no shame. 

John wondered if ghosts had nightmares or if somehow he kept those nightmares at bay the way Flint kept his.

In those moments before Flint woke, John seized the rare opportunity to really study him without being studied in return. Had he run into Flint on the street, he wouldn’t have given him a second glance. But he had come to know Flint, to truly know him as he doubted few people had. Now, he wanted to spend hours mapping out the constellations of freckles that illuminated Flint’s face, giving names to them that only had meaning to the two of them. The constellations disappeared under the fabric of Flint’s shirt and John wondered if Flint’s whole body was the night sky.

This close, John saw how weatherworn Flint’s face was. The constant exposure to the sun and wind had not been kind but John couldn’t imagine Flint any other way. He was a man born of the sea – he should look the part.

John’s hands itched to run through Flint’s hair, to let it loose from its tie and have it spill over his shoulders.

Lying there, John could pretend the rest of the world no longer existed. The treasure, the British, Eleanor, Dufresne, Muldoon’s death, even Billy and Max and the rest belonged somewhere else – not here, in this peaceful moment. 

Their conversation from the night before played over and over in his mind. He rarely lost control of what he intended to say but he noticed he did more and more where Flint was concerned. He couldn’t regret it though, not when it got him here.

John closed his eyes and ducked his head against Flint’s chest, listening to the sound of their hearts beating.

Something had fundamentally shifted with Flint but John couldn’t figure out what it was.

Flint’s breathing changed as he woke.

John selfishly pretended to sleep. Flint was as unguarded with his emotions as John had ever felt. His heart clenched under the onslaught of awe and happiness and something that John understood fully but was too terrified to name, even in his thoughts.

But there was worry there as well, and sadness that stretched down to the bone, and John could not pinpoint the origin of either.

Flint ran a hand through his hair, catching on tangles in his curls but not pulling on them.

He pressed up into the touch and rested an arm over Flint’s side. Fuck pretending. He wanted to enjoy this.

“Good morning,” Flint murmured. 

He hummed in agreement but couldn’t find the strength to move more than he had. 

Flint chuckled. “The world intends to keep spinning whether you intend on waking or not.”

“Then why would I want to wake up?” He shifted until he could look Flint in the eye. When he did, the expression he saw on Flint’s face was more open – more content – than he’d ever seen, despite the darker emotions hiding beneath the surface. 

“What’s on your mind?”

He blinked. “Sorry?”

Flint smiled – small and gentle and almost too genuine for John to handle – and ran a hand through John’s hair, tangling his fingers in the curls John knew had gone flat from sleeping on them. “You were thinking rather loudly,” he clarified but didn’t repeat his question.

John chuckled. “I tend to do that a lot in case you hadn’t noticed.”

Flint huffed a laugh, a strange sound – as if his body had forgotten how to laugh. But his eyes still held their question.

How had he gotten so lucky so witness this? To see all the walls Flint had erected crumble to dust? There were words to describe the inner workings of John Silver’s mind in that moment but they were too much to give voice to – John couldn’t burden the peace that existed between them. “I’ll tell you one day,” he promised.

Flint only smiled, a hint of mischief in his eyes. “I’m sure you will.”

John sat up – he had laid on his arm too long. It was already tingling. He shook it, hoping to get rid of the sensation that bordered on painful.

Flint followed him, maintaining some manner of contact as if John were his only anchor.

He turned to offer some kind of apology but Flint cut him off with a kiss. Nothing more than a gentle brush of lips, it took John apart. In that moment, he could almost deceive himself into thinking this was normal, that Flint wasn’t dead and haunting his house. 

In that moment, he couldn’t bring himself to care that their reality was so abnormal.

Without a word – not that words were needed – John stood, his hand lingering in Flint’s. He finally pulled free and returned to his room to shower and put on clothes that didn’t shake sand out every time he moved – even though Flint had cleaned under his prosthetic, the sand had gotten into every other crack and crevice and itched like hell.

After throwing on a T-shirt and shorts, he carefully traversed the stairs, one hand on the rail, the other still toweling his hair. He tossed the towel onto the counter as he searched for something resembling food to scrounge together for breakfast.

Flint watched him from the doorway – John felt that gaze like a physical touch – but seemed content to leave it at that. 

The undercurrent of worry and despair – John could not longer call it sadness – twisted through the room, stronger than before. He wondered at their cause but, until he could determine what it was, he acted as if it wasn’t there. Flint would tell him eventually.

He rummaged through the pantry. About the only food he had left was bread so he popped a couple of slices into the toaster. Hoping to dispel whatever was on Flint’s mind, he asked, “Enjoying the view?” 

He did not turn at the sound of footsteps behind him, or flinch as Flint wrapped him in his arms, pulling them flush against each other. He sighed and rested his head against Flint’s shoulder, keeping his gaze on the toaster. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

Flint pulled John’s hair back and kissed the exposed skin of his neck. “As you should,” he murmured, the faint movement of his lips sending chills up John’s spine.

The toast popped up. 

John held his thoughts together about as easily as he could hold water in his hands but he managed to get the toast on a plate. His stomach growled loudly.

Flint made no move to let him go.

“James, I need to eat. I barely ate at all yesterday.” He twisted in Flint’s arms and trailed his hand down Flint’s face, tracing over the laugh lines, memorizing every freckle.

Flint’s eyes closed and his mouth fell open as he took a ragged breath.

This was true power, John realized, to turn something that had terrified him to the point of consuming alcohol back into a human being – to turn him into jelly beneath his hands.

He took advantage of Flint’s distraction to grab the plate and break free, throwing a mischievous grin at Flint when he glared.

Flint joined him at the table as he ate, watching him, his worry and his desire to question – to ask…something – building until it was almost stifling.

“You’re worried,” John pointed out. “Whatever you’re so keen to ask me, ask.” He relished the surprise his words elicited, smiling to himself.

“I thought you said you couldn’t read my mind.”

“I believe I said you were difficult to read. Not impossible.” He took another bite of toast. “What’s wrong?”

“You still intend to retrieve the treasure, don’t you?”

John glanced up from his breakfast, scrutinizing Flint’s face and the emotions roiling around him. He couldn’t imagine that Flint would ask out of selfish reasons, not after their discussion the night before. 

That option gone, the only one he had left was Flint’s worry. “I can’t very well back out.” It wasn’t much of an answer but he hoped it would prompt some manner of explanation. 

Flint’s brow furrowed in confusion. “You’re under no obligation from me to continue.”

“I know,” he replied slowly, drawing the words out. “I assumed that had been true since you let me burn the page, but it was still a bargain we made and, no matter the circumstances, I intend to see it through.” He didn’t add – maybe he didn’t have to – that Flint’s fight was now his. “Besides, the situation has gotten far more complicated.”

“What do you mean?”

John swallowed the last bite of toast and filled him in on what he knew of the happenings on the island: the British, Eleanor, Dufresne. He told Flint of the meeting they had had before the crash that killed Muldoon and how Anne Bonny had executed the crewmen responsible for his leg, how Vane had paid for his medical expenses at Max’s behest. “I have others depending on us finding that treasure. And Vane is not a man I can easily cast aside – as I’m sure you understand.”

“Why didn’t you say anything before now?”

“In the days since I’ve been home, we’ve had a grand total of two marginally civilized conversations.” He laughed. “I’d say getting us on the same page was more important. At least it was to me.”

“You assume it wasn’t for me?” Flint asked, a twinge of hurt under the accusation.

“With you, I’ve learned assumptions only invite trouble,” John retorted, a wry smile tugging at his lips.

Flint relaxed. “Fair enough.”

John shook his head. Only for them could an argument be diffused with the admission that their communication left a lot to be desired. “We’re a strange pair, aren’t we?”

Those words triggered something. Flint’s gaze snapped to his, piercing, searching. “We are at that,” he finally murmured but his mind was clearly seeing something else entirely.

Unnerved, leaving Flint to his thoughts, John took his dishes to the sink. Flint had not moved from his seat by the time he returned. 

They stood on a precipice, he realized, riding a giant wave that eventually had to crash into the shore.

He fervently wished he had more time. More time to close his eyes when Flint was reading and listen to the cadence of his voice. More time to memorize the tingle down his spine as Flint played with his hair. More time to catalog each and every sound Flint could make when they kissed.

More time to understand this thing building between them.

But the universe waited on no man and it certainly did not care to wait on him.

His phone rang, its irritating ringtone startling them both. He limped into the living room, his leg not quite up to moving so quickly, and stared at the name on the caller ID. He answered, “Hey, Max.”

“John, are you busy?” Her voice rang through the speaker.

He glanced back at Flint. “Not particularly. Why?”

“It’s Eleanor.”

John closed his eyes, a pulsing headache threatening to explode behind his temple. “What has she done now?”

“Not on the phone,” Max hissed. “I’ll stop by soon.”

With that, she hung up and John sank onto the sofa. He couldn’t wait for this treasure business to be done. He didn’t want to care about the politics of the island; he didn’t want to fear for his life or the lives of his friends. He wanted to find some manner of peace – that was why he had fled here after all.

And yet some small part of his mind countered that even if they found the treasure, Eleanor and her British friends would still be a very painful thorn in his side.

An even smaller part whispered that he would miss it, no matter how he tried to deny it. He had power here he had never had before.

There was no other place he could wake up in the morning and matter.

“Problems?”

John sighed. “When are there not?” 

Flint sat beside him. For several moments, neither spoke – the silence not wearing or uncomfortable – until he asked, “Do you regret it? Coming to Nassau?”

John turned to look at him, studied him for a moment, until Flint met his gaze. “That’s not exactly a fair question,” he pointed out. “If I say no, would you not point out everything I’ve suffered – everything I should regret? But if I say yes, you would take it as a slight.” His mouth curled up at one end. “It would seem I’m better off not saying anything.”

“Are you capable of giving a straightforward answer?”

John laughed. “That depends. Are you capable of asking a straightforward question?”

Some of the tension eased out of Flint’s shoulders. He opened his mouth to say something but a knock on the door interrupted him. He nodded toward the door. “You should find out what’s going on. We’ll talk later.” He vanished, his sudden absence leaving a gaping hole in the room that John struggled to breath around.

No matter how close John got to figuring him out, Flint managed to stay one step ahead.

He opened the door before Max had a chance to knock again. 

Something in his eyes must have concerned her. She shot him a questioning look.

He silently begged her not to ask – he wasn’t sure he wanted to answer nor was he confident in his ability to spin a lie.

Finally, she said, “I have groceries in the car. I did not remember when you last bought food so I brought you some basics.”

John wanted to kiss her. One of these days he needed to purchase his own car, even if it was a little clunker like hers. Until then, he owed her everything.

He and Max unloaded the bags from the car and carried armfuls of grocery bags inside, unpacking them in silence. 

John couldn’t be sure if he felt relieved that Flint had disappeared – he had no idea how he could explain him, or them, to her – or very, very worried. They still had not reached an explanation of Flint’s mental shift. 

“What has Eleanor done?” he asked finally, hoping to stir some manner of conversation and keep his mind occupied.

Max replied, no small amount of bitterness in her voice. “She has been gathering allies, consolidating her power. With the British at her side, she will be unstoppable.”

“What do you mean?”

“Eleanor’s new friends have been digging up dirt on anybody that stands in her way. They have a book, a record of everyone and what they’ve done. And they are Secret Service, so the list is extensive.”

He inhaled sharply. “That’s an escalation from what we knew of her activities a few days ago.”

“I’ve had the girls keep an eye on things. Idelle has always done that well.”

John remembered it was Idelle who informed Max he had been at Eleanor’s bar at some ungodly early hour after his first encounter with Flint. He had no doubt in Max’s abilities or those of the girls. “Do Billy and the others know about this?”

“Not yet. But I will have to tell them shortly.” She turned to face him. “They will want to follow what we discussed with Vane.”

A horrible thought curled up inside John’s head. How far were any of them willing to go to find that treasure? Eleanor was willing to ruin lives over it, Vane willing to kill for it. How far would Max go? Or Billy?

What horrible monster had he unleashed onto the island and what damage would it leave in its wake?

He brushed the thought aside but he couldn’t shake the vague unease it left in its wake. 

“Get everyone out here. We need to make our move. Tonight, if possible.”

Max’s smile, as predatory as some he had seen on Flint, only unsettled him further.

Once she’d left, the puttering of her car fading out, John sought Flint out.

In terms of an actual search, it wasn’t much of one – there was only one place Flint would go. 

The room was a disaster. John hadn’t been inside it since before he lost his leg. It had been overlooked during the massive remodeling while John was in Miami but he couldn’t remember it being in such a state before. What had once been fairly neat stacks of books were now piles of bent spines and torn pages. He imagined Flint’s rage, though he didn’t know whether it had been directed at his supposed betrayal or at the helplessness that came after his return – it had still been a storm that left nothing standing in its wake.

Flint stood by the window, still half boarded shut, his attention turned inward. Every line, from his shoulders down, was ramrod straight and unmoving.

Not wanting to disturb the horrid sanctity of that space more than he already had, John backed up quietly.

“Your days of approaching unannounced are behind you,” Flint murmured, not turning around.

John glanced down at his leg. “I’ve never been able to sneak up on you, prosthetic or not.” He waited for Flint to say something but the silence stretched too long. “If you want me to leave – “ He reached for the door.

“Stop.”

His hand froze over the doorknob, the physical power of Flint’s voice stopping the connection between his brain and his muscles. He pushed the door shut, separating them from the rest of the world, and stepped around the piles of books and loose pages. “Then talk to me.”

Flint sucked in a deep breath and John steeled himself against the oncoming storm.

But nothing came. Only silence met John’s expectations.

He resisted the urge to close those last few steps between them and shake Flint by his jacket. “Where are you?”

No answer.

He started to say something, anything – 

“Miranda, Thomas, and I, we worked to obtain a universal pardon and introduce it to Nassau to eliminate piracy and restore colonial rule there. 

I moved away from those things. Inch by inch, I forgot it all. And now, in this cage, in the belly of this house that has trapped me for so long, I wonder if fighting the fate Nassau seems destined for is worth it, if resisting it doesn’t set me in opposition to everything I once understood to be good and right. To forgive. To make order of chaos. 

I wonder if the most enlightened thing I can do is sit still. Accept what appears to be inevitable and let this be the end of Captain Flint.”

John took a brazen step forward. “And let your sacrifice lose any meaning it might have had? James, nothing is inevitable here. I know how you became Captain Flint – I know what his death drove you to. It’s rather easy to figure out why you went after the treasure in the first place.”

“And what is that?”

“You thought the treasure was your way to honor what Thomas fought for – a free and independent Nassau – and damn any man foolish enough to stand in your way.” He stepped closer still but kept his hands by his side. “The Bahamas have been free of British rule for the last forty years. What you fought for – what you died for – it happened. And it wasn’t wrong to fight for it.”

The pieces clicked into place. The reason for Flint’s worry and sadness over the morning came into sharp focus. “That’s why you’re worried about my going after the treasure now. You’re afraid of how far I am willing to go for you.” Not to be denied, he grasped Flint’s jacket and gently turned him so they faced each other. 

Flint met his gaze evenly, his concern plain.

John ran his hands down Flint’s chest. “I am too,” he admitted. “And I am well aware that our success depends almost entirely on me – that if I cannot find a way to convince those people to join us – that this is worth doing – then the treasure is as good as gone. I could use your help, if you’re willing to give it.”

Flint did not have to reply for John to know his answer. 

“When everyone gets here, you should join us. Billy and DeGroot know you – but you might want to figure out where you’ve been since before Vane’s men decided to remove my leg.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

John smiled thinly. “Because Vane doesn’t know you and Max will end you if she thinks you mean to harm me.” He dropped the smile suddenly, revealing a vulnerability he only allowed Flint to see. “And if I’m being honest, I’d love to have more mornings like today. So I’d prefer it if you didn’t let her.”


	14. Chapter 14

In hindsight, John should never have doubted Flint’s ability to spin a story. How he had ever thought that the man who convinced him to go after a three hundred year old treasure – convinced him to care – couldn’t convince others of _anything_ , he couldn’t quite fathom.

Billy and DeGroot bought Flint’s story without batting an eye – Vane as well, though with slightly more skepticism. This was their first meeting, after all. Flint’s story aside, they spent the majority of the discussion sizing each other up. Without a doubt, had Flint had been in charge, he and Vane would have come to blows. But they were there for a common purpose and John convinced them to let it go. 

For now.

Such disputes could be addressed later.

Max was another matter entirely. She eyed Flint with curiosity, bordering on outright suspicion. John doubted she missed the subtle, quick glances between him and Flint, and he doubted that she couldn’t figure out what fueled those looks. She knew Flint’s story to be just that – a story. But this meeting was neither the time nor the place to address that either – there’d be plenty of time to talk after…well, after everything.

Still, John could be thankful no one outright questioned where Flint had been in the interim since the attack.

That business concluded, Max dove into the reason they called this meeting in the first place. She detailed everything her girls had discovered of Eleanor’s plans, of Rogers’ plans – the record of any transgressions of those that would oppose them. To illustrate how far-reaching the record was, she informed the group that Billy was wanted for murder, Rackham for an extortion racket that cost his father’s competitor millions. 

Neither took the news well.

Vane wondered if the rest of them were in the record – between the rumors about Anne and what John knew Vane capable of, it only made sense that they would be.

Max confirmed Rogers and Eleanor had dirt on them all – _except Flint_ , John thought, half expecting someone to call that out. 

No one did. 

John caught Max’s gaze from across the table, partly to see what she thought of Flint’s lack of a record, but saw something far, far different in her eyes. Dread settled in the pit of his stomach – she knew what they had on him, what had driven him from England to the warm embrace of Nassau.

His world narrowed to nothing, a horrible buzzing static filling his ears. He had meant to tell her on his own terms, when he was ready – if he ever would have been. Now, the British had taken that away from him too.

He couldn’t face that, not after he had spent the better part of a year running from it. He feared what Max thought of him now. 

His breath caught. What would Flint think if – when – he found out?

The rest of the meeting almost stuck to some preordained schedule, Flint watching silently from the shadows, only making his voice heard when absolutely necessary – sometimes to cover for John’s silences and lapses in attention. His concern, initially for John alone, morphed into concern for what their plan entailed and was so apparent that John had to wonder why the others neither noticed nor commented on it. It was all John could focus on, so wrapped up in the horror that Max knew as he was.

They settled on a time late that night for John to make his appearance at the tavern, an appearance that would hopefully give the rest of them time to beg, borrow, and steal whatever supplies they hadn’t already gathered to be ready to set sail at a moment’s notice – at first light if necessary.

It was far, far earlier than they had planned but nothing that had happened since John lost his leg had been according to plan. They had to make it up as they went and hope no one else died. They could not afford another loss. 

John sank in the closest chair he could find once everyone had filtered out. Max, the last to leave, had tried to say something but he had cut her off with a tired, curt “Don’t.” 

He missed the lack of judgment between the pain, pity, anger and determination that flitted across her face. 

She nodded once and walked out, closing the door behind her. The click of the latch echoed loudly in the now empty house.

“What the fuck were you thinking, agreeing to that?” Flint asked, appearing at John’s back, his voice betraying nothing.

Had John not known where such a question came from, he would have lashed out angrily at the presumed condescension. Still, his all-too-raw emotions from the meeting did not lend themselves to a rational response. “I’m aware I should expect doubt in my abilities from everyone. Just not you.”

Flint strode around the chair until John had to face him. 

John met Flint’s gaze defiantly. “You and I discussed everything we spoke of in that meeting, with the notable exception of the news Max brought, this morning. I don’t recall you offering a better option during either conversation.”

Flint’s jaw tightened, the smallest tic the revealed the tempest beneath the calm exterior.

“Are you afraid an invalid can’t hold up their end of a bargain?”

Whatever storm had built up quieted just as quickly. Flint knelt beside him. “What happened in there?” he asked, his voice far too gentle.

This was not a conversation John could have, not now. “Nothing happened in there,” he muttered. It was an outright lie, one he was certain Flint would call him on, but to answer the question required delving into the past that John had so carefully buried – and the Britain had so ruthlessly dragged back to the surface. 

Flint sucked in a breath, a furious storm sparking in the air between them. “That’s how it is then.” And he vanished.

The silence left in his stead sucked all air out of John’s lungs. He rubbed the bridge of his nose, focusing on his breathing if only to keep his own self-hatred and frustration at bay. He expected anger, an explosion to duck, to outmaneuver, but Flint had given him nothing and had left nothing in his absence.

It was enough to fill the aching hole in his stomach with nauseating unease.

The chair was no longer comfortable, the edge of the wooden seat digging into his thighs. He stood, his bad leg aching. Massaging the skin above his prosthetic, he limped into the living room and paced in front of the fireplace.

He knew he needed to sleep before taking on the whole of Nassau tonight, his voice of reason – so silent as of late – finally providing something useful. If only his mind would stop twisting and roiling over the events of the day. Max and – 

And Flint.

It was an eventuality that Max would find out. At least, that was what John told himself. But for Flint to find out? To have to tell him – to see that judgment face to face? That thought alone sickened him. He dropped to the floor and leaned against the sofa, closed his eyes, tried to slow his breathing. 

His living nightmare morphed into one far more horrific as he dozed off.

_“See, Vane don’t know about this and, unless you wise up, he never will.” The man waved the hatchet in front of his face. “Why he’s so content to wait on you I have no idea. You might have played your little games with him but it won’t work on us.” He leaned in, his rancid breath making John sick to his stomach. “We’ll get it out of you, one way or another.”_

_The hatchet connected with bone with a sickening crack. There was a split second of nothingness and then pain erupted in his leg._

_John screamed._

_Crack!_

“John.”

_“Just say the word, Johnny boy and this all stops.”_

_CRACK!_

“John!”

_“If you think I’d let anyone walk away with my treasure, you must be far less intelligent than I gave you credit for.”_

_John shuddered at the cold, dead voice, couldn’t being himself to watch Flint – his Flint – swing the hatchet down…_

“John!”

He woke screaming, unable to free himself from the hands – Flint’s hands – shaking him awake, from Vane’s men’s hands holding him down as the hatchet swung back for another blow. Without fully waking, he scrambled to his feet and raced to the bathroom, as best his leg would allow, to lean over the toilet before his stomach revolted. He gripped the rim as he vomited bile.

Flint hadn’t been there, he tried to assure himself as his stomach heaved, but the nightmare felt too real; he flinched when Flint crouched on the floor beside him and reached out to pull his hair out of the way. His own mind had him jumping at shadows.

“John, it’s only me,” Flint murmured, approaching John as he would a startled animal.

John rested his head in the crook of his elbow, sucking down deep, cleansing breaths. This was the real Flint, not the monster in his nightmare – a monster far too much like himself than he would dare to admit. He managed to croak, his throat painfully raw, “I know.”

When Flint tried again to gently pull his hair back, John let him.

Finally, as his stomach settled, he whispered, “Thank you.”

Flint said nothing but he slid one of his hands to John’s shoulder and squeezed before rising to wet a washcloth to press to John’s forehead.

How long they sat on the cold tile, Flint’s hands running soothing circles wherever they could reach as John struggled to catch his breath, he had no idea. Eventually, with Flint’s help, he managed to get to his feet and clean up. It wasn’t much but at least he only tasted toothpaste now, not vomit.

Flint was waiting for him on the sofa when he emerged from the bathroom. His eyes following every movement, he said nothing as John approached and sank onto the sofa next to him.

John was acutely aware that Flint deserved an answer to his earlier question and he desperately wanted to give him one. 

“If you want to push yourself beyond rational limits,” Flint warned, before John had gathered enough courage to say anything, “then by all means say your piece.”

John managed a weak laugh. “Have I not already done that?” His voice sounded too rough and too deep, even to his own ears.

From his leg, to Muldoon, to this fucking harebrained plan to retrieve a treasure – everything had pushed John well past what a human should endure.

Flint arched an eyebrow but said nothing.

“Christ, I hate it when you do that,” John muttered, leaning forward and propping his chin in his hands.

“Do what?”

“Stay silent instead of answering in the hopes I’ll say something else to either prevent you from answering or give up answers to questions you’ve yet to ask.” He glanced back at Flint.

Flint’s mouth quirked up in a smile. “Then, by all means, call me out on it if you think that will stop me.”

John ducked his head to hide the fondness he couldn’t keep off his face. For all that his brain tried to shove the image of Flint bashing his leg into a useless, lifeless pulp to the foreground, Flint’s every waking action beat it back. “Fair enough.”

They sat in silence for a long moment, the tension from John’s nightmare preventing it from being too comfortable. Through the windows, John could see the sun setting – a harsh reminder of how close they were to starting down a path they could not turn from.

Despite Flint’s warning, he had to voice a reply. He had no easy answer so he talked around it. That part of the game was familiar, safe to a degree. “Do you know why I came to Nassau?” 

He could feel the air shift as Flint furrowed his brow, tried to make sense of the topic of conversation. 

“No one did, except me.” He sighed and pressed back into the sofa cushion, leaving barely any space between him and Flint. “Frankly, I had hoped that would be the end of it. Leave England – and all those troubles – behind me.” He scoffed, keeping his gaze fixed on his hands in his lap as Flint watched him, his concern plain even without looking at his face. “Christ, I was foolish.”  
“Yes, you were,” Flint agreed. 

Shock drove John’s eyes to meet Flint’s but he found no judgment there.

“Our secrets have a way of following us – haunting us – simply because we would wish them to stay hidden.” Flint turned, trapping John’s gaze. He might have reached out, grabbed John’s shoulder – his hand – but somehow Flint understood the distance John still needed. 

“You would know,” John muttered.

“Better than most,” came the easy retort. “I know too that there is no reining them in once they’ve been set loose. Whatever control you have left over them will vanish before you can blink.”

That got John’s full attention. “Should I shout it from the highest building then? Let the whole world know?” Sarcasm colored his words, sharpened them to a point, but if they had any impact on Flint, he didn’t show it. “Or is this an ill-disguised attempt to get me to tell _you_?”

Flint blinked at the accusation, the lines in his face hardening as he stood. “When I want to know – if I thought you would even answer – I will ask.” He walked to the fireplace, cast his gaze down on John. “I knew from the moment we met that something was eating at you but for a time, I didn’t care. What happened in your past was yours and yours alone. As long as it did not impact our agreement, I was resolved to let you keep it to yourself.”

John scoffed, pushing himself off the sofa as well, and retreating from the living room, his prosthetic thudding against the wood floor. “Then why don’t you now?”

Flint didn’t follow, not immediately, but his voice carried perfectly. “The problem with weaseling your way into someone’s head is that they will find a way to weasel into yours.”

John stopped in the archway.

Flint continued, each word more painful than the last. “I saw how you reacted when you realized Max _knew_ and if I were to find out through some other means, what would that do to you? How would you react?”

John gripped the wood trim so tightly his knuckles turned white. “You already know the answer. Why bother asking?”

Flint appeared before him without moving, his expression thunderous. “Because I felt your world fall apart the moment that realization sunk in,” he snapped. “Because I had to shake you awake from the nightmare it provoked. Because I refuse to sit idly by and watch your past destroy what you have built here.” He stepped closer, his voice dropping to a murmur. “Because I hear you.”

Around them, time slowed. John could count the seconds between his heartbeats.

“If we are to be partners, however strange, then let us be partners.” 

John did not miss the slight emphasis on those words, how they so keenly echoed his words from the morning. Whatever meaning they had for Flint, whatever their significance, John could not miss that Flint used them now. “How am I supposed to say no to that?”

“You’re not,” Flint replied, a ghost of a smirk on his face. 

John’s phone vibrated with an incoming text from the coffee table. He offered Flint an apologetic smile before retracing his steps into the living room to answer it. “It’s Max,” he said. “She’ll be here in an hour.”

“That doesn’t leave us much time.”

“It never does,” John replied, forcing himself first into the kitchen to grab a handful of crackers to settle his stomach then upstairs to shower and change into something more appropriate for the task at hand than a T-shirt and jean shorts.

The heat of the pounding water against his back did more to calm his nerves than he expected, chasing the last vestiges of the nightmare away, washing them down the drain.

When he’d finally settled on what to wear and traversed the stairs yet again, he found Flint watching for Max from the living room window. Under no illusion that he could sneak up on Flint, John crossed the distance separating them to stand at Flint’s side.

For a moment, neither moved. Neither spoke. 

They didn’t need to. 

It was enough to stand side by side and face the world.

John caught a glimpse of Max’s headlights as she turned her car onto his drive. The few minutes they had left were slipping through his fingers and there was nothing he could do to stop them.

Flint, on some subconscious level, felt it too. He turned from the window and closed the distance between them, resting his hand on the back of John’s neck, letting his thumb trace the veins there. 

Drawing a ragged breath, John closed his eyes and pushed everything else out of his mind. He exhaled, opening his eyes once more, and found Flint gazing at him, expectantly, patiently. 

He found the words he needed to say. 

“Whatever happens tonight, I will tell you what you want to know – everything – when I get back. If you manage to find out before that – well, I’ll just have to accept that universe intends to fuck me.”

The corners of Flint’s eyes crinkled in amusement. “I would think you could already draw that conclusion. Why haven’t you?”

“I can think of a couple of reasons,” John retorted, intending to put far more bite behind his words than he did. With Flint’s hand still caressing his neck, he sounded far too breathless to be anything other than utterly besotted.

From the way Flint’s breath caught, John knew he had heard it. “I’m curious what the other reasons might be.”

“What makes you think you know any of them?” John teased.

Flint ran his thumb along John’s jaw. “What makes you think I don’t?”

It was too earnest, too open. “James…”

Flint leaned in, his breath ghosting over John’s lips. “Whatever happens out there, tonight… come back.”

Whatever restraint had held John back until that moment broke like a dam, the waters flooding out beyond all control. He gripped Flint’s face in his hands and kissed him.

Flint staggered back under the force but he managed to keep both himself and John from falling over. He wrapped one arm around John’s waist, digging the fingers of his other hand into John’s curls, tilting John’s head back just so; and John was utterly lost.

He heard all the things Flint couldn’t say – his fear at losing him again, his hopelessness at being trapped in the house while John risked his life – and he replied with everything he had been too afraid to say, everything he needed Flint to know.

Max honked her horn, startling them apart.

Flint smoothed John’s hair out where he had utterly messed it up. “Go,” he whispered.

John snuck in one last kiss before rushing out to meet Max.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had hoped to get back to this long before now but I learned the hard way that taking classes while working full time and applying to medical school do not allow for much unused brain power at the end of a day. Now that things are settling out a little, I'm hoping to be more proactive in writing.
> 
> That being said, I cannot express how much fun it was to be back writing this. As always, any feedback is welcome :)

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to come and talk to me, ask me questions, anything, you can find me on tumblr: buckysjustslower.


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